Eliot Shanabrook’s GTV looks purposeful, with good reason:
He took FTD at AONE’s August 26th autocross!

we must be getting good at this! Our second autocross of the season went off without a hitch on a warm and 99% precipitation-free Sunday, August 26th. We had 28 participants this time, up a few from our first outing, mainly due to the fact that we’d invited some of our friends in the Jaguar club to come out and play with us. This resulted in three Jags plus a couple of late-model Porsches and a tricked-out Triumph Spitfire GT that turned in some great times and was fun to watch.

The most fun, of course, was in driving the autocross ourselves! We had all manner of Alfas, running in age from John Darack’s pristine black 1958 Giulietta Spider Veloce to Simon Body’s "new" red 1991 Spider. Once again, you could tell by the huge grins on all the faces what a great time everyone was having!

Since we had some practice back in June, setup went much smoother—measuring and laying out the course, placing the cones, getting the scoring and registration table organized, setting up the timing equipment, etc. Someone forgot to bring registration forms, but plain paper seemed to work just about as well. That same person did bring a copious supply of coffee and donuts, so all is forgiven.

People arrived, paid their twenty-five bucks, signed in, got tech inspected, and watched a demonstration drive by Kevin Redden before walking the course to learn the way around. We were soon off and running, with half the people queuing up and doing their runs while the other half watched, ran the equipment, logged the times, and reset any tipped (or mangled) cones. Then the groups switched, and everybody got three runs in before we broke for lunch, after which we did another three runs, finishing up at around 2:30. Thereafter, everybody who wanted to do some fun runs did so, sometimes exchanging cars to get a different flavor.

The hot Spitfire mentioned above was indeed turning in some spectacular times and was contending for Fastest Time of Day, but fortunately we had Eliot Shanabrook in the house, and Alfa Romeo reigned supreme. Eliot and his dark blue GTV are a joy to watch, and he bested Bob Totten’s Spitfire for top honors.

Eliot, incidentally, sent in some info collected by his in-car data acquisition computer:
    Max RPM: 6250
    Max MPH : 45.7
    Max G’s: 1.446
    Max Cabin Temp: 101
Those are lateral G’s—wow! Eliot says, "I’d seen G’s that high before, but only on the banked Turn 6 at NHIS. It seems that the grip in that parking lot is pretty good—not polished or sealed." Sure suggests how Eliot got around the course so fast…

Just flinging your Alfa around an autocross circuit is fun enough, but it was interesting to watch little good-natured rivalries develop between our members. Adds a little spice to la salsa!

There are so many neat things happening at an AONE autocross that it’s impossible to list them all. For example, Bob Ladd delighted all onlookers with his spirited, high-RPM attacks on the course in his Alfetta GT, and then did another half dozen equally frenetic fun runs before heading for home. (Hope you made it, Bob!) Bob was also the only driver requiring a push to the sidelines, caused by a snapped throttle cable. (Peter Walker supplied a replacement from his mobile parts bin, and Bob was soon back out there flogging his Alfa.)