Cal Club Autocross Wins More Than Half the Classes at San Diego Match Tour

Full Results

San Diego, CA—Cal Club Autocross members took part in the second national SCCA west coast event of the 2018 season—the Tire Rack San Diego Match Tour on April 7-8—winning 12 classes and earning an additional eight trophies.

Match Tour events take place over the course of a weekend, with two sessions per day. Saturday sees the first two sessions, each being a “traditional” three-run autocross. The best run from the morning and afternoon sessions are put together to determine class winners. On Sunday, competitors who chose to stay get another three looks at the course and are then placed into three brackets to run head-to-head to determine overall winners.

With beautiful 70-degree weather and partly sunny skies, Saturday competition got underway at SDCCU Stadium (formerly Qualcomm Stadium). In A Street, Matt Jones led wire-to-wire en route to a healthy 4.5-second win in the five-driver class. James Yom faired the same in B Street, jumping on an early lead and cruising to a 6.8-second victory.

E Street was a real battle and witnessed a reversal of morning and afternoon placement. Leonard Cachola had a .040 lead over Dennis Hubbard after the morning session but coned away the winning run on his first afternoon session run. Additionally, Cachola dealt with car issues as the rear alignment slipped on co-driver Edward Tsui’s MR2 Spyder. Hubbard sealed his win on his first afternoon run to take a .558 victory over Cachola. Peter Loney placed third in his first event in his daily driver, a 10th Anniversary Edition 1999 Mazda Miata.

In G Street, Kaustav Acharya earned a .684 victory over Derek Romero, who coned both of his fastest session runs to finish second. Co-drivers Jonathan Lugod and Kevin Pao went 1-2 in Street Touring Roadster, with Pao getting the final trophy spot on his third afternoon run after initially falling behind Robert Joe.

Derek Punch won the eight-driver Street Touring Xtreme class as Steve O’Blenes coned away the win to ultimately place third. Craig Naylor had a half-second lead after the morning session in Street Touring Sport and was able to hold on by one-tenth as Gary Cameron went four-tenths faster in the afternoon.

Nicole Wong seemed to be in the driver’s seat after the morning session in E Street Prepared with a one-second lead over co-driver John Hogan, but was dirty on her first two afternoon runs and failed to come in with a fast enough time to beat Hogan, who moved to the top spot by almost four-tenths.

Stanley Kowalski and Mike Nakata took the second and third trophy spots in Street Modified. It seemed as if they would go 1-2, but Peter Bollenbecker jumped into another car to complete his final afternoon run following car issues, and leapt to the top of the standings by 1.5 seconds.

Anthony Porta switched classes to X Prepared for the weekend and won the eight-driver class by over two seconds. Another driver to switch classes was Jeff Wong, who went to CAM-C, and promptly beat the competition by over seven seconds (the Wong Camaro did a hot swap of tires between heats from CAM to ESP).

Eric Clements staked an early lead in C Modified and went on to beat Jason Swindle by 3.3 seconds, while Jeff Kiesel won E Modified by three seconds and Zak Kiesel won F Modified by 20 seconds. Chad Ryker was another driver who led from the get-go, taking CAM-T by almost five seconds.