Trophy winners April 5 NHMS Next: Watkins Glen April 20-21 ...Volume 2009, Issue 2 April 2009 Trophy...

Volume 2009, Issue 2 April 2009

Trophy winners April 5 NHMS

Next: Watkins Glen April 20-21 Registration still open, contact

[email protected]

It’s all about the fast lap

Officers, Directors and Chiefs

For contact information go to COM Sports Car Club - COMSCC Officers,

Board of Directors, and Chiefs of Specialties

Officers President: John Spain Vice President: Will Martins Secretary: Bill Hosselbarth Treasurer: Paul Shearer

Board of Directors Bruce Allen Gordon Andrade Dan D'Arcy Mike Demopoulos Fred Ferguson Kurt Hissong Lester Seal Mark Swinehart Sam Webster

Chiefs of Specialties Drift Editor: Bruce Allen [email protected] Chief of Equipment: Bill Hosselbarth Chief of Event Operations: Sam Webster Event and Trophy Chair: Toni Clark Chief of Instructors Will Martins Chief of Membership: Paul Shearer Pointskeeper: Mark Swinehart Chief of Publicity: Bill Hosselbarth Registrar: Mark Swinehart Chief of Rules: Chief Steward: Nate Hine Chief of Tech: Bill Fitzmaurice Chief of Timing and Scoring: Bill Hosselbarth Chief of Marketing and Webmaster: Mike Demopoulos

Stewards

Nate Hine (Chief Steward) Bill Fitzmaurice Bruce Allen Christopher Tier David Boutelle Keith Guigere Kevin Foote Lee Walsh Lester Seal Scott Rosnick Will Martins Copyright COM Sports Car Club Inc. All rights reserved

Table of Contents Officers, Directors and Chiefs .............................. 2

Boiler Plate .................................................. 2 Starting Line ......................................................... 3

From the Editor ............................................ 3 From the President ..................................... 3 Driving Lines by the Chief Instructor ...... 4 From the Chief of Operations ....................... 5 (old) Member article: .................................... 6

Finish Line: Events ............................................... 7 COM at Portland Maine Expo....................... 7 New Hampshire Motorsport Park April 4-5.... 9

But Wait, There’s More...................................... 16 Advertisements.................................................... 17 Boiler Plate The Four Wheel Drift is the official publication of the COM Sports Car Club, Inc. All information is for the use of club members only. The Drift is published several times a year, usually after each event. Advertising Rates: Text ads with small photo free for members. Full Page $150; Half Page - $100; Quarter page - $50. Color is free. Please email files to editor [email protected]. About the Club: The COM Sports Car Club, Inc. is a not-for-profit corporation with membership open to any person interested in sports cars, High Performance Driving Events and Solo I time trial competition. For up-to-date information, answers to questions, etc. visit our Web site at http://www.comscc.com/. Time trial results, championship points status and class records for each track are current on the Web site. Membership and Board meetings Board meetings of the club are held on the third Wednesday of each month at 7:30 at Yangtze River restaurant 584 King St Route 110 in Littleton (exit 31 off 495) - go 100 yards up Route 119, turn left on Route 110 at the lights, less than 1/4 mile up on your left. Click here for a Google Map of the location. Everyone is welcome to attend. General meetings are held at 7:00 before the Board meeting except in January when the awards banquet is the meeting.

The Four Wheel Drift

Starting Line From the Editor Bruce Allen Great first event a week ago! We were far from completely sold out but it looks like we took (only) a small financial loss. That is OK in these hard times. Many clubs are having lots of troubles. The Audi NA club cancelled their April 13th event for lack of entries. The SCCA New England Region opening regional race for April 18 has only 117 racers registered on line at this time and that means a big loss. I have seen them in the summer have 250 racers. COM’s good performance is NO accident. Your Board of Directors has been running scared for almost a year. The Board has taken a number of marketing initiatives that have yielded results in the form of new members and coaxing existing members to enter events. We need our best sales force, YOU, to help out. Mention COM to any friends that seem like car nuts. Get them to sign up as members. Help them and current members get on track. If you are a member that hasn’t quite taken the step to enter that first school, take advantage of our new Mentor program to get some personal questions answered privately http://www.comscc.org/getting-started/mentoring/ . Read more from John and Dianne below. No pictures are by me. Thanks to Alex Grabau, Liz Baker, Adam Helfethilliker, Dan Wynne, Rich Murphy and Dianne Herrick. I hope you and others will send me photos from the Glen event.

It’s all about the fast lap is the motto I would assign to the club. There seems to be two kinds of clubs out there: wheel-to-wheel racing clubs like the SCCA and High Performance Driving Event (HPDE) clubs that do not allow the timing of any laps. With the former you have a lot of fun but need a disposable race car and high level of safety equipment because there is going to be car to car contact. With the latter you may get a lot of track time but you and your instructor may never learn the fast way around the track

because no one is counting. COMSCC is that unique club where It’s all about the fast lap . Our first day is an HPDE but because our goal is the second day competitive Solo I time trial competition we are always measuring lap times. All of our instructors know how to run a fast lap because they compete in the COM time trials. Many are also SCCA racers.

From the President John Spain Fellow COM members, Your board of directors has been working diligently over the past year to develop an event schedule and several marketing efforts that will see the club through our current recession. I am proud of these efforts and of the people involved in implementing them. I believe that your club is in good hands. Our efforts include creating a schedule of events that is easier on the average members schedule and wallet . . . think "home events" at NHMS vs. the travel and time needed for "away events." Additionally, many club members have donated their time to represent the club at a myriad of enthusiast events through the course of the winter, meeting potential members and describing the benefits of membership to our unique club. A mentoring program has been implemented to assist these potential members in entry and preparation for their first events.


So far our efforts have been focused on the event schedule and on building membership. Today we launch an initiative to build event attendance through rewarding our members for consistent attendance. We hope to accomplish three things with this initiative: 1) Increase the number of members competing for class championships. After all, time trial competition is one of the things that make this club unique. 2) Reward those members who have consistently attended the majority of events over the past few years. 3) Build up registration for our events from within the membership. Successful events will help keep your club strong through this recession. The promotion is simple and two pronged to make it easier for those of you who are unable to attend away events this year. If you attend each of the five, 2-day events being held at NHMS, the last DAY of the season will be free of charge. If you attend these events and also attend our upcoming, 2-day events at Watkins Glen and Mont Tremblant the entire final 2-day event will be free of charge. You don't need to do anything special to earn this reward other than attend the events. If you are on course to receive this benefit I will contact you on an event-by-event basis to confirm your status beginning with the finals days of registration for the upcoming event at Watkins Glen. The first step is attending our upcoming event at NHMS. Registration is still open at COM's registration site: http://carclub.cainc.com/ It is my hope that you will find value in this promotion. Please feel free to contact me should you have any questions.

John

Driving Lines by the Chief Instructor

Will Martins During the Instructor of the Year award presentation at the most recent COM banquet, Carl Fossum (the ex Chief Instructor) commented that his job as Chief Instructor is only possible because he has surrounded himself with smart people. As the newly recruited COMSCC chief instructor I have had the opportunity to walk a mile in Carl’s shoes (or is it driven a mile in his car?). Not only was Carl being humble about the time and dedication he put into his four years as chief instructor, he was also exactly right about all of those smart people. The smart people Carl referred to are the members who make up our instructor core. I have always been impressed by several of our instructors, and now that I have had an opportunity to work closely with more COM instructors I am even more impressed. At our NHMS event several instructors went out of their way to come by and ask if I needed a hand with anything. An instructor with a no-show student volunteered to ride with a licensed driver who was seeking advanced instruction. Several other instructors volunteered to ride with their students on day two of the event. While all of these acts may seem small, they add up to create what has become a top-notch instructor core. This was proven at the end of the event when I heard the accolades and excitement of a handful of students who enjoyed a great weekend with COM. Carl and the chief instructors before him went through great lengths to preserve the integrity of our instructor core, and I will do my best to preserve that tradition. When it comes to recruiting instructors, it seems that COM bucks the trend of other clubs and organizations. While most if not all other clubs are short-handed of instructors, COM actually has a long


waiting list. In the relatively short time that I’ve had access to the chief instructor email account, I have received an amazing amount of offers from people who would like to instruct for COM. Most of these people are shocked to hear about the waiting list and the requirement/preference that our handpicked instructors are recruited from within the club. I look forward to working with our instructors and continuing COM’s long heritage of providing top-notch instruction to our membership! NHMS was a great event and hopefully the start of an amazing season. The open-house events held at DentSport Garage and Apex Automotive Engineering helped us bring in some new members, and hopefully we’ll see more and more of them at upcoming events. The DSG and Apex events brought us new members like Dan Wynne in his Mitsubishi Evo 8 and brothers Tony and Tommy Le in their Honda S2000. Welcome guys! Congratulations to Ted Mendham, Will Strobel, Adam Hilliker, and Charles Parrott for earning their COM licenses at this event! Catch you at the track,

Will

From the Chief of Operations Sam Webster The next events will be smoother from an entry perspective. For future events we will be able to register people on the evening before. I had no problem obtaining early entry for all those that we needed to start the process, so that is a plus. Mark and Will did a great effort juggling those entries. We “ate” a few trophies due to the on again off again entries of some people and TT cancellations, but the cost was small. On the subject of trophies, the desk sets were very well received! Thanks Toni! The Pro Flagger group did an excellent job, with their primary mission of our safety. There was a red flag thrown that was perhaps a little quick, and we will discuss before the next NHMS event. The track personnel were quick to respond to our clean up request with the sweeper, and the wrecker crew and flaggers pitched in as well to keep the event down time at a minimum. Special thanks also to my two friends who assisted at the garage out/pit check points. They were Alan Parker, a COM member from years back who just wanted to give a helping hand, and Donna Stevens (Secretary for the SCC of NH), who didn’t want to sit around the house for the weekend. Alan was “old school” and needed to understand where we needed a little flexibility, but did a good job of checking safety items, etc. as cars went out to the hot pits. Both Donna and Alan are on the Pro Flagger roster, so they understand the safety aspects of the event. And of course I will continue to take contributions to the Grocery Getter Retirement Fund for ANOTHER awesome weather day for the time trials. Watkins Glen - here we come!

Sam


(old) Member article: Dick Harding

DR. P. LOOKS THROUGH THE REAR VIEW MIRROR

Special Events: Advanced Drivers School

After the closing of the Salisbury Events and the opening of Bryar Motorsports Park, some of us “Rookies” went racing with SCCA. We learned a lot and in time moved up to be instructors. It was easy because COM. had given us a big head start. For some reason the schooling we got was not only fundamental and necessary, but more or less survival training. After a few years the reality dawned on me that finesse is a very difficult thing to teach. It must be a gift from the racing gods to favor a few, and leave the rest of us mere mortals to do the best we could. I was always thinking of how some of this should be taught, but no venue was available. No talent was available to impart this knowledge. One day, at a moment of rare clarity, it all came together. I approached the COM. Board with what I thought was a super proposal for an advanced drivers school but they immediately rejected the idea. Strike One!!! I returned with a much milder event, but the Board sunk my ship by denying any funding. Strike Two!!! My best pitch was to ask Ken Duclos to head up such an event and Ken questioned my sanity, reasoning ability, and mental status. Strike Three!!! Grrrrr! I finally proposed a new agenda to the board and it was accepted. The event was to be supported by sponsors and event fees with no cost to the club. The event was to be held on the Friday of a COM. weekend event so club members attending time trials could camp out on Friday night. After a prolonged period of time (with some begging) Ken agreed to run the event under his direction. Ken Duclos is, in my opinion, one of the best drivers ever to come from the East Coast. From a V8 Powered Chevelle to SCCA National Formula Champion, Ken is the essence of driving finesse, a gentleman and a good friend. Since no one is perfect, Ken does not suffer fools lightly and isn’t afraid to speak out occasionally. I have been on the short end of his ire a few times myself but deservedly so. We got the date, cleared the event with Ted Goddard and solicited dealerships that dealt with Sports Cars, Foreign Machinery and Race Shops. Every one was very enthusiastic. The day of the event went very smoothly. Ken’s School was based on the fact that the corner exit was more important than the entrance. We started by walking the track backwards before driving at speed in the normal direction. Ken did a super job and everyone learned a lot. However, the best was yet to come. After the track closed, Ken gathered up the drivers and gave the best summation I ever heard. I’ll quote it as accurately as a twenty-five-year-old memory can recall. Ken said – “Two or three drivers have real talent…Keep practicing your craft and don’t give up. Some drivers here are O.K. and this school will help get your times down. The rest of you guys should just forget about it!” There was deathly silence for about 15 seconds as Ken let his critique sink in. Nobody knew who was in the bottom bracket, but every one got a real dose of reality. Thank you, Ken Duclos. Dick Harding


Finish Line: Events

COM at Portland Maine Expo By Dianne Herrick As you may know, a stock car event was held at the Portland Expo on February 20 & 21. With the help of Barry Gammon, Craig and I were able to get space for 1 car to represent the COM Club. I contacted Mark, of Racin Paper to obtain the space. Mark suggested that we offer a free driving day as a door prize to aide in the club being recognized. Thank you Bill H. John S. for setting this up. The morning of the 20th @ 8:30, Friday, was busy getting in and setting up. Barry and Darlene Gammon as well at Kurt Hissong helped make it easier. We put a box out for the drawing, which was done on Saturday evening. The Club and the drawing was mentioned several times through out the event. Craig was interviewed Friday, Sam (volunteered?) on Saturday. We had about 22 people come over to enter the drawing. I lost track of how many fliers we gave out. Those that visited us and watched the DVD's were really impressed with what you drivers do. The drawing was done by Cassidy Emery. The picture of her doing the drawing did not come out (sorry Cassidy) you did a great job. The winner is Donna Coffin. She is going to give the certificate to her husband Jim even though she drives also. They have driven Thunder Road in VT as well as the local tracks. Jim is really looking forward to this new venue of driving. This is really, really, cool. I was able to meet up with Steve Perry of Mainely Motor Sports. E-mail: [email protected]. He runs the same type of show for 3 days, in Augusta Maine in January. Yes, COM Sports Car Club can be there next year. We can bring two cars, no cost to the club. Be creative with decorations & give a-ways. Date for 2010 is January 8,9,10. Also, Steve wants to film the COM driver day with the Coffins to put on his TV show. He feels its a great contrast to the circle tracks he shows. The Coffins have been filmed before and do not mind. They are looking possibly at the July event. This is a great opportunity to reach local race car drivers and promote the Club. Again, a Thank You goes out to Barry & Darlene, your circle track car #2 looks terrific! And Kurt for your help too. The new DVD player you bought for the club works great! It was good seeing Grove, Jonathan, Sam and Shawn, glad you could all make it. I'm going to follow up on the entrants for the drawing, just to reinforce thoughts of the club and invite them to one of our events. Below are some pictures of the show. Barry's car is #2 with a big "H" on the hood. The little #2 car in the background is Barry's also. He uses that to tow his race car around inside the building. See you at NHIS!

Dianne


Racin Paper Portland Expo February 20-21

Craig Herrick leaning on his Mustang in COM Booth


Cassidy Emory did the drawing for COM Dianne Herrick, Donna Coffin, drawing winner, and Craig

New Hampshire Motorsport Park April 4-5

Dave Carl (Porsche 993) and Steve Corn (Nissan GTR) show two great apex in Turn 6 on school day (By

Alex Grabau)


But what is Kurt doing? Brake failure? (by Alex)

Right Era, wrong class. Adam Hilliker is about to be run over by Charles Parrot’s Camaro (by Alex)


Pretty (real) Mini Dan Cavalletto and friend that needs helmet

Mike or Stephen’s GTR about to T bone Mikes GTR Joe Lu, the garage monster

Charles’ ancient 1969 Camaro Crunched down on the springs in turn 10 (by Adam Helfethilliker)


Three Retro V8s in Turn 3: Cort Wilson’s GT40, Bill McMahon’s V8 Healey and Charles’ Camaro

(by Adam)

Garage is jammed. Do all Miatas need garages? (by Dan Wynne)

How did Jeff Baker’s TR4 pass that 993? Newbie Brian Copperthite in RX8 (by Rich Murphy)


You can bring anything to COM: Gene Kanter’s Audi Dan Wynne’s Mitsu Evo VIII

Adrian Fitts’ Mazdaspeed3 Malik Hansen’s Subie Impreza 2.5 RS

Dan Cavalletto’s Subie WRX Turn 12 Ted Mendham’s Subie WRX STi


Our namesakes! Stu Feldman and Mario’s Vette

Bill McMahon’s American Iron Austin Healey Theresa Condict BMW M Roadster


Mike Higgins’ 95 Mustang but maybe Lauren Hart was driving (??)

Mark’s Focus today is on this PB Focus


But Wait, There’s More

Caption needed. What is Mark doing to Mik with his trophy at Mt. Tremblant?


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Finis

Trophy winners April 5 NHMS Next: Watkins Glen April 20-21 ...Volume 2009, Issue 2 April 2009 Trophy...

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Transcript of Trophy winners April 5 NHMS Next: Watkins Glen April 20-21 ...Volume 2009, Issue 2 April 2009 Trophy...