Our Quest for a Championship

Man... what a journey. It was a long and boring ride from Lincoln Nebraska to Atlanta that took us 17 hours to complete. After two days of competition (or maybe 6 minutes of driving... yes, we’re crazy) the drive home seemed like it went on forever.

I’m sure I must have been grinning most of the way back, as it ended up as a very successful and gratifying trip.

Three of us headed to Lincoln where almost 1200 other competitors were gathering for the annual autocross lovers paradise. I hear someone asking “What is an autocross?” My answer is right here. But in short, it’s a timed event where you drive a car on a course against the clock. Think of it as qualifying runs. The courses are always different and set up with traffic cones. At the Nationals, there are two different courses, we ran the east course on Tuesday and the west course on Wednesday. We get three runs per course with no practice. The time of your fastest run from each course is added together and that becomes your final time. Watch the videos to see what I’m talking about.

Long story short, my son Matthew, after driving the car only twice, managed to do what I’ve tried to do for the last three years, he finished in 2nd place. As a class, we’re realistic about beating the current (and now 8 time National Champion) champion Jeff Kiesel. Right now Jeff is untouchable, so the rest of us compete for 2nd, which for us is just like first place. :-) The last two years I have managed to come in 3rd place twice, last year I was 0.245 seconds out of 2nd place, and this year I was back by 0.360 seconds. Yes, Matthew beat me. :-) Youth. I did manage to beat him on the west course by 0.021 seconds but he had me on the other course. So out of a total time of approximately 113 seconds (fastest from each course) I was 0.360 seconds back in the same car. Intense.

I was probably the most proud dad in the building that night when we were on the podium for our awards. Times like these don’t come often, and I had to soak it all in and treasure the moment. Matthew was one excited kid (if you call 24 years old a kid) and told me it was the best moment of his driving career. He’s already planning for next year

I chronicled most of the trip on my blog (where you can also find my weather blog), hope you’ll take a few minutes to take a look.