Participants Enjoy Runways Of El Toro at Ninth Event of 2018 Season

Nearly 150 people enjoyed the runways of El Toro in Irvine, CA on Sunday, September 29 for Cal Club Autocross’s ninth event of the 2018 season. Course designer Reed Gibson utilized a crossover and transition elements in the last outing in Orange County for the season.

In A Street, Randy Gonzalez led from the gate en route to a 2.5-second win over Mihail Milkov, while Brandon Porambo was another big winner in Classic American Muscle Contemporary taking a 2.4-second victory over Earl Merz. In Classic American Muscle Traditional, Chad Ryker’s first run was enough to win the class, but he added more padding on his final run with a seven-tenths win against Efrain Diaz.

The largest class of the day, Street Touring Roadster, witnessed 14 participants. Out-of-towner Connor Bloum shot straight to the top of the class using a fast fourth run to top Michael Yanase by .310. Jonathan Lugod earned the final trophy spot just a hair back by .066. California Street Touring was the second largest class of the day with Adrian Cardenas taking the win in the 10-driver field, eight-tenths over Jacob Abrams. Like STR, the battle for third was incredibly close as Michael Bradley finished just .053 back off Abrams.

Driving with Cal Club Autocross for the first time in a few months, Craig Naylor stood on his second run to win Street Touring Sport by nearly one second over Elvin Hom. After two dirty runs in his first three attempts, Steve O’Blenes found time and posted a clean fourth run to extend his lead in Street Touring eXtreme by .913 against Guy Ankeny.

Edward Tsui had the early lead in E Street before Leonard Cachola reclaimed it on his second run. After putting down a fast third run, Cachola held off co-driver Tsui with the .254 victory. F Street was another close battle as Myles Wakayama came from behind and earned the win on his fourth and final run, defeating Nicole Wong by .262.

PAX Ladies witnessed the top four drivers separated by less than four tenths. Lisa Berry emerged in the top spot by a mere .065 over Catherine Tran, who in turn bested Shauna Rios by .129. Each of the three drivers in C Street saved their best runs for last, but it was Thomas Frecentese with the fastest run, beating Michael Parker by almost three-tenths.

Both G Street and H Street had big wins, with Chris Lara taking a near three second victory in GS and Omar Kaayal topping Eric Wong by 2.5-seconds in HS. Super Stock R was a family affair as Brian and Cathy Strovers went 1-2 in the five-driver class (Brian would take the 2.7-second win over Cathy).

Brian Howlett claimed top honors in the nine-driver Historic class with a .463 win against Timothy Li. Jeff Wong changed indexes to STP and earned a .212 victory in PAX over Anthony Porta, who in turn topped Matt Jones by only .194. Tom Tanquary was the victor in B Street with a 1.4-second win over Curt Luther. Car troubles prevented Sebastian Rios was taking more than one run, but had he not been dirty on his lone run, it would have been enough to win the class.

Stanley Kowalski improved his raw times in each of his four runs, claiming top honors in Street Mod Combined by six-tenths over Jordin Filip. Filip’s fourth run was over half a second faster than his third run, but it was dirty. Had it been clean, it would have cut Kowalski’s lead to less than a tenth.

The lead was just .02 for Robert Ekstrand heading info final runs in Junior A until he dropped six-tenths on his last run to extend his lead over Shelby Baltazar to .632. Bolong Guan from GS was the Novice class victor beating out Laura Corodimas from BS by over one second.

Cal Club Autocross returns to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, CA for its tenth event of the season on Sunday, October 21.

A big thank you to all our chiefs and volunteers!