Arnot Mall: Father’s Day Runaway

 

The 2008 Solo season is now three events old and going strong. What better way to celebrate the season and Father’s Day, simultaneously, than an Arnot Mall happening. Running at the Arnot is a long tradition for the Glen Region and one of my favorite locations. Oh, the lot is a little small, but there are elevation changes, off-camber turns, and even differing surfaces, adhesion-wise, to keep the drivers on their toes. Best of all, Sunday, June 15 was mostly sunny and definitely warm on the lot surface and 46 drivers were more than ready to give it their all.

 

The small lot at the southeast corner of the Mall is always a challenge to course designers. Invariably, the result is a figure-8 or hourglass design and many laps are built in just to get the average car up to 45 seconds of track exposure. This time, the designers opted for a figure-8 first lap followed by a clockwise oval second lap and it seemed to work quite well. Specifically, the course opened with the figure 8, a gentle, leftward arc into a patented and infamous Glen Region “Pearly Gate.” From the “Pearly Gate” the course arced sharply left and uphill before straightening and heading back downhill through the “Pearly Gate” in the opposite direction. This led to a sharply arced, uphill, right hand turn to complete the figure-8 portion and commence the clockwise oval for one lap before exiting. All in all, a pretty decent use of the lot.

 

The largest classes du jour were G-Stock with six drivers and H-Stock and Street Modified 2 with a respectable five apiece. G- and H-Stock seem to be the most popular classes this year at Glen Region events, something not at all surprising in the Glen Region or to this former G-Stocker. In G-Stock, only a couple tenths of a second separated brothers Mark and Matt Lockhart in Mark’s ‘07 Mini Cooper S, but that was sufficient for Mark to take class honors. Right behind the brothers Lockhart was some incredibly close competition in the guise of Cody Chambers, who took third in his Subaru Impreza 2.5 RS. Meanwhile in H-Stock, Richard Ayers (Honda Civic Si) barely led after the first run group, but worked harder on the second set of runs to take first decisively from Bruce Coulombe (’92 Honda Civic) in second and Jason Balliet (’01 Honda Civic EX) in third. Over in Street Modified 2 was a continuation of the father-son battle between Dave and Colin Raymond in Colin’s ’92 Mazda Miata. Colin led at the end of the end of the first group of runs, but remembering it was Father’s Day permitted Dave to edge him out by 6/100 of a second in the second group of runs. It made little difference to David Savage (2006 Nissan 350Z) who showing no respect for Dave’s fatherhood (after all, Dave’s not David’s father) edged by the Raymond family to take class honors by a scant 3/10 of a second.

 

In other multi-driver classes, Tom Deneka (Toyota MR2) voted the ugliest yellow of the yellow cars in attendance [It was a fair vote, Tom], had the best times in E-Stock getting by Nile Heermans (RED Toyota MR2) for first place. In the “All Camaro, All the Time” F-Stock Class, Bret Bauer (’00 Camaro SS) continued his domination of F-Stock and PAX with some incredible driving, leaving David Hendrickson to battle for second place over his brother Ryan, both in the same ’87 Camaro Z28.

 

C Street Prepared was a blast from the past as former competitors Brian Bell (’95 Mazda Miata) and Ryan Jones (’99 Mazda Miata) mixed it up with as in years past. It was a close, well-fought battle, but Ryan triumphed by 2/10 of one second over Brian, leaving third place to Liz Lozier  (’99 Mazda Miata), whose day will come.

 

In Street Modified, Julius Carozza (BMW 318) showed no respect for Glen Region Solo Board leader, Kyle Kubick (‘94 VW Corrado SLC) or for Tom Sterling (‘04 Pontiac GTO) and won the class, handily. Meanwhile over in F125 Shifter Kart, it was Casey Creamer Day as he decisively beat out challenges from Rob Craig (1991 Techno Kart) and Pat Scopelliti (1991 Techno Kart) to take the day both in class and for FTD in his MW Chassis 100cc HPV. Pat Scopelliti did manage, however, to set what I believe to be a new Glen Region record by ending up atop seven cones. Yes, that’s atop and not necessarily knocked over. Perhaps Pat reasoned that the cones would give him additional traction, but it didn’t work out that way.

 

There were several other single and two car classes at the event that were well worth watching. Check ‘em out along with all of the official results online at http://www.glen-scca.org/solo/schedule.asp. While you’re at it, you might want to check out the seasonal point standings at the same location.

 

Once again, the Glen Region thanks all the folks who made the Father’s Day at Arnot Mall event possible. This is especially so for the folks of Arnot Mall. You, the stores and staff, always go out of your way to make us feel welcome and this event works well, because of you. As for the event, itself, Ben Heater was superb as event chair, ditto for Richard Ayers and Cody Chambers in registration, and Ken Moyer and Tom Deneka as safety stewards. A big thanks to the course design and setup crew: Casey Creamer, Pat Scopelliti, Bruce Coulombe, Ben Heater, and Bret Bauer. Finally, Ben Heater and Ken Moyer deserve a special vote of appreciation for driving the new Glen Region van to the site, a largely thankless, time consuming job. As always, if I omitted anyone, I’m sorry. Speaking of being sorry, my deepest apologies to giving our fearless leader a new last name in the last write-up. I know better, Kyle, honest I do and sure wouldn’t want to do anything that might make your life any more miserable than it might be already.

 

The next event is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, June 28 and 29 at the Seneca Army Depot. This event will be co-hosted with our friends from the Central New York Region and should be exciting. More information is available on our website at http://www.glen-scca.org/solo/.

 

As always, we'll keep the timing lights on for you.