Triangle Chapter Report – July 2013

The Triangle Chapter meeting was well-attended, despite being held just a day before the Independence Day holiday, There were plenty of old friends, and a new acquaintance, Jarrod Turner. We all introduced ourselves in round-robin fashion and discovered that Jarrod is a professional driver. No, not for a race team, but it was funny to watch all the folks who met him for the first time mentally searching their memories to see whom he might driver for. But Jarrod is a chauffeur and he’s looking to drive something a little more exciting than what he does for work. We hope he’ll join us for an autocross or a weekend at VIR come October. Welcome, Jarrod.

Justin Deffenbaugh provided the entertainment again. This time it was never-before-seen video of his brother Blair in the Pulsar (the slowest ITC car in the Southeast I’ve been told) at VIR in March. Yes, we saw Blair in the March Memories race BEFORE it made it to YouTube. Thanks, Justin! And Justin’s computer also played in-car video of Steve’s Rose’s IT-7 win a Roebling Road last weekend. That was cool! Good job Steve! And Justin also gave us a short account of his debut at the Tail of the Dragon Hill Climb. It was a lot of fun he said, and very interesting to run a course without guardrails or tires and real hazards if you screwed up. Good Job, Justin!

And congratulations are in order for starter Jennifer Dover who’s graduating as a veterinary technician. Way to go, Jennifer! One of our starters is starting a new chapter in her career. We are sure you’ll be great with all those animals in need.

The business portion of our meeting was short. We discussed the sad news that the Oak Tree had come down at VIR. And we discussed the fact that next year’s SCCA Annual National Convention will be in Charlotte to coincide with the new North American Motorsports Expo in that city. The good news is that all members of NCR who have never attended an SCCA National Convention before, with all its seminars, forums, and town halls, now have an opportunity to go for very little overhead. The bad news is that the date is later than previous conventions and conflicts with our traditional March Memories race weekend. We’ll be looking to try to change that for 2014 if VIR and the Southeast Region are amenable. And right now Easter in 2014 falls on our traditional weekend for the Double National Majors race. We’ve run on Easter before, of course, but the National Office would like us to try to change that too. But we’ll have to see whether anything can be done about changing those dates for next year.

We then gave a round of applause to Member at Large Sam Fouse and his buddy Evan who finished the work on rebuilding the scales room portion of the Tech shed at VIR. And we singled out for special mention volunteers Dwight Cooke (who did the lion’s share of the painting), and West Chapter Coordinator Buddy Mathews, who helped in many ways. I’m told that this might have been the first construction project at VIR to come in on-time and under budget! In any case, we are very proud of our guys and the work that they did. Sam was not present – something about getting up with his son who was down from DC to get married instead – so we did not begrudge him that and cheered him and the whole crew anyway. Hats off to you all, guys!

We also passed around a copy of our Goblins Go ad for Grassroots Motorsports. The race is October 19 – 20 and that issue should be distributed starting September 6th or so, which leaves plenty of time for interested parties to sign up. The big news for this year is that all the cars in the Production Car Festival (ProdFest) are now eligible to run in the Tarheel Cup, so those guys can get two races that weekend instead of just one as in years past. The event will feature very early 2014 SARRC points and the first two ECR races for the 2014 season as well. Hope you are planning on attending!

And I hope you are planning on attending the August Triangle Chapter meeting on Wednesday, August 7th. I’ll see you there…or at the races!

James Shanks, Triangle Chapter Coordinator

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