Credit for all photos: Andrew Pallotta
Nearly all 250+ people preregistered for this event showed up to the site on Saturday to be greeted by harsh rains and cold temperatures. Normally, this isn't an unlikely occurrence for an autocross event in June in Ohio (or maybe it is, a little), but today was a particularly unique in that those conditions never once let up. Flood warnings had been issued for the area since Friday night, and the resulting rainfall totaled nearly 3 inches for the day.
This naturally created quite a few complications for competitors – especially for those who came unprepared for the amount of standing water on course. More interestingly, the weather conditions greatly equalized the raw time deltas across most of the classes. Whereas the time difference between – say, CS and SSR – is usually a few seconds, the raw times between those classes on each side are really not terribly different.
First heat saw the ladies classes and B1 hit the course first, and it was pandemonium as nearly everyone struggled to keep their cars from becoming pontoon boats. The lightweight mid-engined MR2 Spyder of the Petersons did particularly well, as did the Spyder driven by Adam Norton, putting down incredibly good 1.9 60ft times in the pouring rain. Timothy Whalen would lead over Joe Blaha in GS, and Shelly Monfort would assume her typical position at the top of L1 in the John Vitamvas E46 DSP car.
CS showed equal amounts of silliness, with the lead in CS changing hands after nearly every run. However, Chris Fenter – in the Harvey MX5 – would come out strong to lead the class by a significant margin on first runs. This lead would be extended over his following two runs to push him up into the second qualifier spot for the day. Kyle Herbst would have put on a clinic in wet driving in STX had he stayed clean – he had unfortunately coned two runs in the low 30-second range that would've been among the fastest of the raw times at the event.
As shifts 3 and 4 took the course, the rain continued to intensify, laying a sizable sheet of rain down the Toledo pavement. This did little to slow down Aaron Shoe, whose car was highly favored in these conditions over the Panda of David White and PJ Corrales. The end result was a massive 2.6-second gap by Shoe over the class.
As we wound down towards the end of shift 4 and conditions began to worsen – timing glitches, spinning cars, and simply tired workers – the announcement came over the radio that the afternoon runs would be cancelled due to the increasingly terrible conditions. It was unfortunate to have to cancel this session, but most competitors seemed to agree, and were not looking forward to another run through the cycle of driving while soaked. Instead, they retired to the local watering holes early, hoping to return on Sunday for some dry runs.
