I spent the weekend at the Mid-Ohio race course attending the weekend's races with NASA, the National Auto Sport Association. Saturday and Sunday's races were my first with this group but I can assure you I'll be back.

While I greatly enjoy racing with the Porsche Club of America (PCA), by comparison to NASA, PCA is a little, well, Germanic. They (PCA) are exteremly well organized and the events go off without a hitch, but as a competitor you're little more than a cog in the wheel. PCA events feel a bit like they're being run by IBM with the primary objective being to make sure things are well organized.

By comparison, NASA seems more like a bunch of racers who got together to stage an event with the primary goal of having fun. A subtle but important difference.

A quick example: We race in mixed classes. In my race Sunday, for instance, there were probably 40 cars on the track at once, from 6 or 8 different classes. My group, GTS2, was the next-to-fastest of the groups in our race. Saturday, because of an accident that prevented us from qualifying, the race was gridded by class based on times from the morning warm-up. So, all of GTS3 went first, then all of us, and so on.

That was a fair way to do it because some folks didn't go out for the morning warm up session so they were just gridded at the back of their group, not at the back of the whole field. Fine. Good call. The only problem is, several of us in GTS2 were faster than all but two or three of the GTS3 guys...but we were starting behind them. Given the qualifying issues, this seemed fair even if it wasn't ideal.

Sunday, we got to qualify normally but for whatever reason NASA had planned to again grid us the way they'd done it Saturday. We, the racers, talked about it and there was a pretty strong consensus we prefered to grid by qualifying time...mixing up the classes a bit.

So, a couple of the guys went over and talked the Race Director and told him what we had in mind. If this had happened at a PCA race, I would be shocked if the organizers said anything other than, "I can appreciate your concern but that's how it's going to be." At NASA, they said, "OK, sure. If that's how you guys want it, that's what we'll do for your race." So, our race was gridded strictly by qualifying time while the other two races were gridded by time within class.

Very cooperative. Very well run. And a lot of fun.

As far as the races went, I got a pair of second-places, both behind Jim Child, shown here in his black 968. He won but at least I made him work for it. We had a spectacular race Sunday where we swapped the lead half a dozen times amid what seemed like an almost endless string of passing attempts on each other (while passing other cars, too). The third place car in our group, Mike Ward, was right behind us for the best parts of the battle with a video camera running. I can't wait to see the footage as I've heard it's pretty exciting (it certainly was from behind the wheel).

1. Anthony05/14/2007 01:04:36 PM

Any video?