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Saw it and thought of you, lol.

Just so you know what you missed.
From my post on the CACC site:

Out of town family on Friday and Saturday, kept us out of the Beach Run, but we decided to not let the whole weekend be “Cobra funs” free,  so Matt and I joined Cumberland regulars Steve Marsh and Frank Stanovich at the Mid-State Airport for some simply awesome autocrossing.

The weather was gorgeous…for hiking. For trying to get heat into slicks, it left much to be desired. But that’s just me being bitter. The weather applied to all attendees.  It was beautiful at the airport. The weather really was perfect, just on the cool side (as in it never bloke 70 degrees), but wonderfully clear and sunny.
 
The airport layout is terrific. Imagine Cumberland, but with being able to use all of the aircraft parking are behind the terminal and most of one runway. I’m not kidding; it’s HUGE.

 Because the course doesn’t loop back on itself, there is little concern about on course interference. They regularly had three cars on course at any given time. I thought the course was very well laid out, flowy, and somewhat open. However, most of the regulars up there were complaining about how tight and restrictive it was. Made me very anxious to see what they consider an “open” course!   From descriptions, it sounds like their normal courses rival the longest course we’ve seen at the June Historics.

  The course was a fairly long straight after the start light, (which was cool by itself) a slight right onto a long, broad four gate slalom, sharp left that transitioned into a big sweeper to the right, a sharp U turn, a crossover, a SEVEN cone traditional slalom, a really tricky offset gate slalom, a sharp left, a short jog, and sharp Chicago box left, another broad offset slalom, with a very long, hardly-qualifies-as-a-Chicago-box, Chicago box and a short straight into the finish timing lights.

Most runs averaged around the 60 second mark. FTD was set by a shift cart at 46.xx; fully seven seconds faster than the next closest car. Simply unreal. And I thought the Reynards were cheating! 

My biggest complaint was that there’s no worker at the finish giving you your time and cone count. They had a time display, but you had no way of knowing whether or not you’d coned, or where you stood in the class ranking. Maybe they were announcing it, but I never heard anything.

I’m not sure of everyone’s times, and I don’t have an inner contact like Ben does with the National Road Autosports guys, so I’ll have to go by memory.

I showed the only real generosity I’ve shown in years and gave Matt the chance to run in the marginally warmer third heat. So, Frank and I ran in heat two of three. Frank ran first and started with a 63, then took five seconds off that, and I think got in the 57 second range with the rest of his five.  I started with a run that proved how ugly those tires are when they’re cold and managed a 56 something. I pulled a miracle 52 and change on my second run, but coned and never got close to that again, managing a best of mid 54s on the remaining three runs.  Matt and Steve battled it out in the third heat, with Steve managing to edge Matt out. Steve was consistently pulling 55s and 54s with varying cone counts playing into the final times. Matt decided this was a great opportunity to practice left foot breaking and did an awesome job, getting to within a second of Steve and me; although I think a cone may have marred his best run. But still, that’s entirely too close for comfort to my times, so he’s cut off from the Cobra until I get some more practice in. 

 The only thing that marred a perfect performance from the car was a sticking brake MC balance bar during my runs. I think I tried to set too much rear bias and it was not returning fully. Some lube supplied by Steve evidently cured it as Matt had no problem with it. One last cool thing; they have no problem with passengers, so I gave rides to at least three locals. Nobody laughed at my driving, so I guess they had a good time. 

They did fun runs, but we decided to opt out knowing we had a 3 1/2 hour ride in front of us.

All in all, it was an awesome time. Everyone was friendly and warm to us outsiders. They even let me win the 50/50 raffle to show how generous they could be. There were even some familiar faces in the form of Peter Harris and Ron Dotts in addition to Frank and Steve.

A sincere “THANK YOU” to Frank and Steve for inviting us to attend, and to Ron Dotts and the whole CPR crew for being so generous and warm. I just wish it was closer!!