Classes Competition Ramps Up at February Autocross

Cal Club Autocross hosted its second event of the 2018 season on Sunday, February 11 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, CA. With a new stream-lined format featuring hot swapping workers, two grids, and the opportunity for free runs in the afternoon, over 150 drivers took to the Eric Clements designed course for a fun day of racing.

The 13-driver PAX class kicked things off in the first group, showcasing the top five participants separated by just .347. Tom Berry in ASP claimed first place honors with a .088 victory over Jeff Wong in FS, with Matt Jones of AS in third. It should be noted that all three competitors coned their fastest runs.

Tom Tanquary made it back-to-back class wins in B Street by defeating James Yom by .186, while Thomas Frecentese was dominant in the three-driver C Street class, earning an eight-second win over Ramy Mattar.

A second driver to remain perfect in class wins early in the season was Jason Swindle in C Modified, besting Eric Clements by .245 (Clements coned his fastest run, but still would have been .025 behind Swindle). A third driver getting his second win of the season was Brian Howlett in Historic 1, earning a 1.7 second victory over Brian Jackson.

Randy Gonzalez picked up his first victory in the Corvette-dominated A Street class with a .187 win against Danny Castillo. Jonathan Hartendorp in his BWM M3 also etched his name in the top spot for the first time this season with a .382 win over Scott Mullens in his Subaru WRX. Michael Bradley placed third almost three-tenths back, with Scott Hanson in fourth only .052 behind.

Each of the winners in the three Classic American Muscle classes were repeats from January. Brandon Porambo, who co-drove a different competitor’s car this time around, picked up a big win in CAM-C by edging multi-time national champion Brian Peters by three-tenths. Thomas Kamman was dominant again in CAM-S winning by 4.1 seconds, while Chad Ryker led wire-to-wire in CAM-T earning a 2.4 second victory over Kevin Reidy.

The SCCA’s newest class for 2018, Solo Spec Coupe, made its debut at the February event with Max Hayter taking the first class win by 1.2 seconds over Mike Simanyi. Stanley Kowalski showed why he’s the fastest in Street Mod Combined (composed of cars in SM, SSM, and SMF) with a four-tenths victory against Peter Bollenbecker for his second class win of the year.

Jonathan Lugod controlled one of the largest classes of the day, Street Touring Roadster (13 entrants), by dropping nearly nine-tenths from his first to second run to best Ken Motonishi by over seven-tenths. Peter Loney rounded out the podium just .243 back, with Robert Joe in fourth only .071 behind Loney.

Leonard Cachola remained perfect in E Street this season picking up a near one-second win over Dennis Hubbard, while Ed Tsui finished third in the eight-driver class. The closest margin of victory came in F Street with Nicole Wong standing on her first run to hold off Eric Forbes by just .008.

Driving her 2005 Mazda RX8, Catherine Tran earned her first PAX Ladies victory of 2018 with a .057 victory over Jessica Pao in the 2016 Mazda MX5. Theresa Berry in a 2004 Porsche Boxster was a close third just .025 behind Pao.

Two large class victories came as Thomas Kenna won D Street by 2.5 seconds while Michael Parker dominated G Street by over five seconds. Contrary to that was H Street as Reed Gibson, driving his daily driver Ford Fiesta ST, edged Omar Kaayal by a mere .029.

Another tight battle occurred in Street Touring Sport, with Gary Cameron’s clean fourth run enough to take the win over Craig Naylor by .084 (both drivers coned their fastest runs, but the standings wouldn’t have changed). Steve O’Blenes made it two-for-two in Street Touring eXtreme, besting co-driver Adam Tarnoff by a second.

In Novice class (participants compete in their normal classes throughout the day, then get indexed together), Bolong Guan of GS earned a 1.1 second victory against Laura Corodimas of BS, with Leonardo Chervin coming in third.

Three junior kart classes took to the course to close out the competition: Robert Ekstrand won Junior A by two seconds over Samuel Barrish, while Tadao Nakata and Lakshmi Nakata competed in Junior B and Junior C respectively.

Cal Club Autocross returns to Auto Club Speedway for the third event of 2018—Prep for the Pro Autocross hosted by SCNAX—on Sunday, March. 4

A big thank you to all our chiefs for the event, as well as all our volunteers and those who helped clean up the course during and after the event: