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All Autumn in a Day
Somebody must have hit the fast forward button on Autumn. We had our first winter snow storm yesterday — much too early in the season. It was a great day to get caught up on watching movies, sorting photos, and editing videos. Much has been happening at GeorgeCo in the last three months. Let’s get caught up.
Labor Day weekend brought the inaugural Baltimore Grand Prix to the Inner Harbor of Baltimore. (Click the photo above for the complete set.) The three days of racing got off to a slow start as the track was about half a day late opening up to practice, but once it did open, Balmer put on an excellent show. Crowds were strong all three days and the racing was solid. The local BMW club had a hospitality tent and a car corral which proved great fun and also gave GeorgeCo an audience to advertise the GeorgeCo E30 powered by Beano for sale. GeorgeCo even got to meet Bobby Rahal (he signed my hat.)
At the end of the day, we even got to drive the track. (GeorgeCo thought he was in a traffic jam to leave. Much to his surprise, traffic turned left instead of right, and we found ourselves on the track.) Pratt Street was bumpy at parade-lap speed, I couldn’t imagine what it was like at 185 MPH.
The beginning of October brought the final NCC BMW CCA Drivers’ School of the year. This time we were on the Jefferson Circuit. Rain turned most of the driving into one big skidpad exercise. But even at super low speeds with no grip, the Jefferson is tons of fun. Mid-day on the last day, the sun came out for a while and we got to take the new GeorgeCo MINI out for a spin. The video below shows the GeorgeCo MINI wearing regular old street tires, chasing down a certain Red M36. I still haven’t mastered getting the helmet-cam on straight, but this video is better than most.
The big news of the month, however, has to be that the GeorgeCo E30 Powered by Beano has been sold. The buyer is an enthusiastic autocrosser who will give it a good home and the attention it deserves. Scuderia GeorgeCo has now gone from a high of five cars, down to a more reasonable three.
2006 Historics
We just got back from our annual trip to California. This year it was all about good food, beaches, historic automobile racing, and deck building. This year Cooper race cars were the featured 
marque along with a tribute to Jack Brabham. Once again we enjoyed the hospitality of the Golden Gate and Central California Chapters of the BMWCCA at their Festorics tent. The weekend was also the kick-off for MINI Takes the States and the first delivery of the special edition JCW GP cars. You can listen to that over at White Roof Radio. Unfortunately all we had with us was our trusty Hertz rental car — all of the MINIs present got to drive a parade lap during lunch. There were so many they completely lapped the course. I really enjoyed the historic F1 cars. Toyota also had their current F1 car there with Ricardo Zonta their test driver. He set a new lap record (for noise as well as speed.) Some day I’ll make it out to Laguna Seca for a track day. For now I’ll just enjoy watching the old timers.
Here’s the deck:
NAMCC Summit Point
We took the afternoon off and drove the new convertible up to see the North American MINI Cooper Challenge at Summit Point, West Virginia. Randy Webb won the first race and Steve Diniz won the second in a day of very exciting MINI racing at Summit Point. Run in conjunction with the Phil Wicks Driving Academy and taking place during MINI Meet East, there was a pretty good turn-out for a mid-week event. We got really lucky with the weather given all of the flooding of the past week. We just caught the last two laps of the first race but were there for all of the second.
At the start of the second race, Steve Diniz got the jump on Randy Webb into the Karussel and took the early lead. They were running neck-and-neck going into the back straight, but when the came out of the hairpin Randy was back in the lead and pulling away. It was a very close race for the first 5 laps or so. Steve seemed to have the advantage in cornering and Randy in horsepower. Going into the Karussel, Steve was a little late on the brakes and took a brief off-course adventure around the outside of the turn. He was very fortunate not to visit the tire barrier. It looked like Randy had the second race wrapped up and then he disappeared on the backside of the course. I heard he may have run out of gas which is a disappointing end to an excellent race.
Many more photos on Flickr.
2005 Historics (a little late)
One annual event I really miss since we moved away from California nearly 6 years ago, is the annual “Monterey Weekend.” If you are a car nut, that can only mean the weekend of the Concorso Italiano and Historic Automobile races at Laguna Seca. (Oh, and there’s some sort of car show at a place called Pebble Beach, too. But that’s a bit too high brow for me.) It’s always a weekend of good food, good company, and nothing but fast cars as far as the eye can see. This year we had a bit of fog too, but that didn’t dampen our spirits. The good news for 2006 is that Cooper will be the featured Marque. The Northern California BMW CCA chapter has a great deal with their Festorics event and trackside hospitality tent.
