Summer Begins in Earnest at Autocross #6

For the third straight month, Cal Club Autocross returned to El Toro in Irvine, CA to host its sixth event of the 2018 season on Sunday, June 10. For the second event in a row, competitors enjoyed ideal weather conditions and a Reed Gibson designed course, which utilized longer stretches of runway at the former marine base.

Six junior karters in three different classes took to the course first, with Kevin Jung earning a near two-second victory in JA over Robert Ekstrand. Brother-sister duo Tadao and Lakshmi Nakata ran unopposed in JB and JC respectively.

Cars took to the course next, as Thomas Frecentese led from start to finish in C Street, winning the four-driver class by over three seconds. Running his new Porsche Cayman S, Sebastian Rios jumped out of the gate strong to lead B Street on his first run before ultimately dropping six-tenths on his last run to take the victory over Tom Tanquary by eight-tenths. After coning his first run, Silvio Zucchet cleaned up his act on his second run to beat Thomas Kenna by half a second.

The second largest class of the event, PAX, witnessed a real battle at the top as Jeff Stuart bested Jeff Wong by a mere .191. Stuart ran in Eric Forbes’ BMW M3 and went .352 faster on his last run to claim the win. Anthony Porta rounded out the trophy spots in third being four-tenths back, with Tom Berry a close fourth only .089 behind.

Trailing after two runs, Efrain Diaz jumped in front of Chad Ryker with a fast third run in Classic American Muscle Traditional. Ryker ended up coning his fastest run to finish second to Diaz by .600. Brandon Porambo led from the gate in Classic American Muscle Contemporary, winning the class by two seconds.

Another driver to lead from the start was Adrian Cardenas in California Street Touring, besting Michael Bradley by 1.6-seconds. In a rare feat, there was a tie for third place as Mike Flanigan and Scott Mullens finished with identical times! Stanley Kowalski in the Mitsubishi Evo returned to the top of the leaderboard in Street Mod Combined, earning a four-tenths victory over Matt Davis in the “noodle” Toyota Corolla.

Trailing after the first run, Jonathan Lugod dropped nearly 3.5-seconds on his second run to take the lead in the largest class of the event, Street Touring Roadster. He improved another half a second on his third run to defeat Reed Gibson by 1.2-seconds, en route to top overall PAX on the day. Mike Yanase finished in third place only .016 behind, while visitor Chris Carris (driving Sean Fentermacher’s car) placed fourth.

In E Street and F Street, both Leonard Cachola and Nicole Wong led from their first runs on the way to 1.7- and 2.6-second victories respectively. Trailing by half a second heading into fourth and final runs, Eric Wong in his Chevy Bolt improved by over six-tenths on his last run to leap front in front of Isaac Lam and take the six-driver H Street crown by .176.

Historic 1 was well represented with seven cars ranging from a Morgan Plus 4, a Chevy Corvair, a Volkswagen Karmann T53, and a Mustang, as Brian Howlett claimed the victory with a three-second win over Doug Teulie. In PAX Ladies, the top two finishers saved their best runs for last, and it was Jessica Pao in the Madza MX5 edging Catherine Tran in the Madza RX8 by .697 for the win.

Novice was a full class with 12 competitors and witnessed Alexander Shank in a Subaru BRZ win the class over Laura Corodimas in a BMW M2. Bolong Guan finished third with Greg Debert in fourth.

Cal Club Autocross returns to El Toro for its seventh event of the season on Sunday, July 22.

A big thank you to all our chiefs and volunteers!