I recently attended the annual Zone 7 President’s Meeting, hosted by our wonderful Zone 7 Representative, Brian Adkins. It was a great event and one of the things that really stuck to me is that one of our primary responsibilities is to recognize our membership. There are so many outstanding individuals that contribute to the Club year in and year out. So in the spirit of recognizing our membership, let me start with a big honor. Larry Sharp was just awarded the Zone 7 Lifetime Achievement Award. This is fantastic, as I have written in the past, Larry has been a huge influence on me, in my journey in Porsches. Larry was a long time GGR member, he had done so much for our Region. He has served as our President twice, Vice President once, was our Zone 7 Rep, he ran our Track series, put on so many epic tours over the years, and is still one of the most talented Autocrossers I’ve ever met. So congratulations to Larry for getting the recognition he so right earned over the years.

In the spirit of recognizing our membership, we had a little oversight last year, as we did not give GGR Awards last year. But it’s not too late, so what we have done for the 2024 Board of Directors is to honor our members for 2023 awards this year, so at the Awards Ceremony at the end of this year, we will hand out awards to recipients for both 2023 and 2024. I’m very pleased to be announce the following 2023 award recipients:

• Perc Bliss Award goes to Himanshu Patel, our dedicated Autocross Director.
• Don Lang Memorial Award goes to Steve Taty, for all the way he has impacted our Track series.
• Don Matthews Memorial Award goes to Jie Mao and Diana  Bogorodskaya, for being at nearly every event that the Club puts on in the past few years.
• Competitive Event of the Year goes to the Time Trial Series, which was brought back after a very long hiatus.
• Social Event of the Year was the Annual Awards Luncheon at the Blackhawk Museum back in December.
• Enthusiast of the Year goes to Connie Lu, a sharp autocrosser that has brought so much energy to the Club for the past 10 years.
• Family of the Year goes to Hekmaty Family – Anton, Caevon, Cyrus, and Michelle.

So congratulations to all the award recipients. It is an honor to recognize how each of these members contribute to make our Region better. 

Sincerely,

Howard Yao

president@pca-ggr.org