Editor's Notes
Hi everyone,
Spring is here early this year, and our season is starting earlier than normal as well. The autocross committee has been busy with preparations for the upcoming season. The planning has been challenging, but we have several new features that should be good additions.
First off, our season is starting earlier, and in Fairbanks! The first two events will be held on April 20 and 21 at the Carlson Center. It appears this will be the last autocrosses at the Carlson, as they are going to install bollards with plug-ins (something they were planning on doing last year, but didn't).
Our favorite venue, Houston Middle School, is out of commission for the foreseeable future as the school was heavily damaged by the earthquake. Instead, we'll be making more trips to Tok and hopefully using Bartlett while the Porsche club is away at their annual national event.
Another huge change is that we'll be hosting Alaska's first Starting Line school! I'd like to give a huge shout out to Ken Martens for organizing this- we will have 3 instructors coming up from the lower 48 to help instruct at an event at ARP on May 4th. I'm thinking about signing up myself, as I could certainly work on my driving skills. While it is geared towards beginners, the school is open to everyone, and space is extremely limited, so get in there while you can.
We are proud to be having an autocross at the Rev Alaska show at the Menard Center- we hope it will be a good opportunity to get some much needed exposure for our group. We will also have a booth up at Tune in the Spring and AK Race Wars, so come on out to those events and talk with our folks.
We are always looking for folks to chair or co-chair events, especially the July 6th and 7th event in Tok- anybody up for the challenge?
Anyway, here is the schedule for this summer's autocross season:
See you on course!
-Paul Anderson
Editor
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Road Rally Checkpoint
Hello everyone! Just a quick note from the Road Rally Steward. Most folks don’t realize that this year is our Region’s 30th Anniversary. The Arctic Alaska Region of the Sports Car Club of America was founded to have a home for Road Rally in Alaska. I am proud to be the Region Steward for our program during this anniversary year and hope that the calendar we have scheduled this year will bring together the old and the new. I like to think that we are starting another thirty years.
We kicked off our 30th Road Rally season with the Snake Charmer Road Rally on the 16th of March. Our start point was graciously hosted by Kendall Audi of Anchorage where nine teams set off on a Portage Glacier turnaround. The teams were given a packet of photographs in random order, and a set of loosely measured route instructions with mileage windows in them letting the teams know that there was a photo that was taken in that general vicinity. The route let them to the finishing point at Culmination Motorsports, a vintage Porsche restoration shop in South Anchorage. It just so happened that Culmination Motorsports is co-located with Fire Island Rustic Bakery where some amazing soup, pastries and sandwiches were able to be purchased. Everyone seemed to have a great time and of the nine teams, two teams got all the photos in the correct order and the winner was determined by a flip of the coin. Marshall Carter and Davin Mitchell walked away the winners with SCCA 75th Anniversary Coins as trophies.
Our next scheduled event will be on the 18th of May as we explore the Mat-Su Valley starting in Palmer and ending at the Alaska Transportation Museum with the Tune In The Spring car and truck show. It will be a Hound and Hare style rally and for all those new to Road Rally, we will all learn together.
I am also excited to announce that we will return to the Bear Paw festival with our very first attempt in this new program with a true Time Speed Distance Rally. Since many of us have never participated or for that matter put together a TSD we will make it simple and fun. The rally will start at the Bear Paw Car Show on Friday the 12th of July in downtown Eagle River. Stay tuned for more information.
We also have plans for a multi-day rally in October, and wind things up again in December with another EPIC 30th Anniversary Winter Year Ender!
I hope everyone makes it out to at least one Rally this year!
COME RALLY WITH US!!
-Terrance Pearson
2019 Road Rally Steward
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Autocross Numbers
Hello All,
An effort is being made to clean up the numbers in Motorsport Reg. Permenant numbers are reserved for current SCCA members. We have had some new members this last year that wanted numbers but they were taken by non members, hence the cleanup. If you are a current member please let me know if you want to keep the number you currently have in MSR or if you want another number and I can see if it is available. If you have a number and want to keep it and are not a current member then you are invited to join SCCA. If you have any questions about membership please feel free to ask me or Melissa Martens as we are the membership chairs for the region.
You can email me at: bpeago@aol.com
Thanks,
-Becky Pearson
Co-Membership Chair
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A Word From Our Area Director
Did you see the announcement about SCCA and iRacing partnering to promote online racing? If that puzzled you, there are a few things you should know. I was surprised to learn that iRacing is a huge business, and that there are people out there who are becoming champions and winning races who have never turned a wheel on a race or even worn a helmet.
Here’s the kicker: they’re also earning real money doing it. Many iRacing series pay purses to their winners, and vendors seek their endorsements for equipment and games.
If SCCA is going to stay relevant, we need to grab a chunk of that online racing business. The reason is simple - it’s not the core of what we do, but here we’ve got thousands of people who dream about racing and spend time and effort on the sport. What better group of people could we possibly attract to SCCA?
-Jeffrey Zurschmeide,
Area 13 Director
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Arctic Alaska Region 2018 Board of Directors
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Regional Executive
Kent Hamilton
Assistant Regional Executive
Chad Barnes
Treasurer
Ken Martens
Secretary
Paul Anderson
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Trustees
Kevin Cose
VJ Maisonet
Wally Tetlow
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