Stop Cancer Challenge Highlights October Cal Club Autocross

Cal Club Autocross returned to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, CA for its tenth event of the 2018 season on Sunday, October 21. In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month in October and Prostate Cancer Awareness Month in September, the club partnered with Cancer Journeys Foundation to host a special competition during the event.

Teams comprised of one female and one male drove the autocross course four times, with the fastest time of each person combined for one overall score. Fifteen teams participated in the challenge across three different categories.

Age Unlimited Category

1st Place – Shauna Rios and Sebastian Rios

2nd Place – Jessica Pao and Kevin Pao

3rd Place – Sara Odioso and Matt Jones

Two Drivers Under 21 Category

1st Place – Shelby Baltazar and Robert Ekstrand

Combined Age Over 130 Category

1st Place – Sue Howlett and Brian Howlett

Over 100 competitors took to the course, which was composed of pin turns and off-sets using every bit of the large lot at Auto Club Speedway. The junior karters led off the event, with all three Junior A drivers finishing within .143 of each other. Shelby Baltazar shaved off over 1.3 seconds from her second to third runs, and it would prove to be enough as she held off Robert Ekstrand by just .038 after he improved in each run. Samuel Barrish also got faster on every drive, finishing only a tenth back of second place.

In the first group, PAX class was led by Matt Jones in his corvette until the very last run, when Tom Berry in the Evo improved by just over a tenth to come from behind for the .028 victory. Driving an E Street Miata, James Yom finished just .113 back of Jones in third place.

B Street was an all-Porsche class with Sebastian Rios leading from the gate en route to a 1.3-second victory over Don Green. Ken Motonishi was another driver who led from the first run, ultimately dropping over 1.6 seconds to defeat Bob Endicott by six-tenths.

Another extremely close battle occurred in Classic American Muscle Contemporary, as both Earl Merz and Brandon Porambo saved their best for last. However, it was Merz who took the win, besting Porambo by a mere .037 margin. Craig Naylor had the early lead in Street Touring Sport as Gary Cameron coned his first run, but Cameron rebounded with three clean runs in a row to move past Naylor by 1.7-seconds.

Steve O’Blenes led Street Touring eXtreme after two runs, but Michael Yanase put down faster third and fourth runs to top O’Blenes by half a second in the five-driver class. Adrian Cardenas jumped out to the early lead in the eight-person California Street Touring class, ultimately taking a 1.2-second victory over Michael Bradley, who coned his fastest run to finish second.

Randy Gonzalez was the big winner in A Street, improving on each of his four runs to win the class by almost three seconds over Rick Brown. Likewise, Brian Strovers earned a 2.8-second victory over wife Cathy Strovers in Super Stock R.

Pete Loney led E Street after the first run until Dennis Hubbard dropped a second on his second run to take the lead. Hubbard then improved by another three-tenths on his third run as Loney also improved, but not enough as Hubbard held on for the .264 victory.

After a DNF on her first run, Lisa Berry got a clean and quick second run, which put her at the top of the seven-driver PAX Ladies class. Jessica Pao moved up to second place by utilizing a fast fourth run, finishing three-tenths back of first.

Moving from E Street to C Street, Leonard Cachola took the lead in CS after run one, but both Michael Parker and Thomas Frecentese passed Cachola on their second runs. Neither improved on their third runs, but both laid down faster fourth runs that were almost identical—the upper hand went to Parker, who edged Frecentese by just .062.

The largest class of the event was Historic 1 with 10 drivers, and it was course designer Doug Teulie in his Volkswagen Karmannn taking the win by almost six-tenths over Brian Howlett in the Morgan Plus 4, who in turn defeated Brian Jackson in his Corvair by seven-tenths. In Novice class, Laura Corodimas in her B Street BMW claimed a 3.6-second win over Matt Wherry in CAM-C.

Cal Club Autocross returns to Fontana for its 11th event of the 2018 season on Sunday, November 11.

A big thank you to all our chiefs and volunteers!