PCA-GGR Autocross Enthusiasts,
2025 Season Kick-off:
Our inaugural event of the 2025 season – PCA-GGR Autocross #1 – was held at Crows Landing NAS on Saturday, March 15, 2025. We had a ‘full house’ totaling 81 drivers competing in 71 different cars including 7 drivers who were new to autocross which we paired up with a comparable number of our very capable Zone 7 trained instructors. The weekend, which included our PCA-GGR autocross on Saturday and our sister region PCA-LPR autocross on Sunday was book-ended by rain, so we lucked out as the weekend weather was great. Our course for both days was designed by Tara Shapowal-Lau who is well known in autocross circles and tweaked by our capable setup team led by Brant Ballantyne on site for safety and flow. All things considered the event went smoothly and drivers departed for the day having had a safe, fun and enjoyable experience!
Congratulations to Tara Shapowal-Lau for the top time of day (TToD) of 54.198 sec. She and Steve Lau, who had the next best raw time of 54.599 sec shared their 2010 Porsche Cayman race car known as “Stormy”. Drivers with the top PAX times where Tara (1st) and Steve (2nd) followed by Praneil Prasad (3rd) in a 2019 911 Carrera T, Drew Powers (4th) in a 2014 Cayman S and Ed Valko (5th) in a 2024 GT4 RS. Full provisional results are available in our new Clokkr Timing System here: https://app.clokkr.com/results/events/e3a47c9d-d442-4590-abe1-185c3930ca95
Our inaugural event provides an excellent opportunity to acknowledge the great female drivers who participate actively and competitively as drivers and coaches in our autocross events – thank you ladies, for camaraderie and collaboration towards making autocross accessible and fun for all!
Figure 1: Several of our autocross ladies left to right: Kimberly Merritt, Stacy O’Connell, Tara Shapowal-Lau, Ursula Wong, Connie Lu, and Dominique Wainwright. Photo by Jonathon Simmons.
Our second event of the season – PCA-GGR Autocross #2 – will be at Salinas Municipal Airport on Sunday, April 13, 2025. Note that PCA-LPR will host its second event autocross on that same weekend on Saturday, April 12, 2025, for those who want to run on both days.
Our Novice and Advanced Car Control Clinics will be held at the Alameda Point NAS on April 26th and 27th respectively. Look for announcements soon as we’ll be looking for coaches from clubs across our Zone 7 Region working in collaboration with our event partner the Golden Gate Lotus Club (GGLC).
We are grateful to Porsche Redwood City for their 2025 season sponsorship and support!
Steve Forshay
PCA-GGR Autocross Director