Great American Solo Series Comes to Columbus

by Andy Bell

On May 30 through June 1st OVR hosted its first Great American Solo Series Event at Cooper Stadium in Columbus. As the weekend grew near, the weather reports grew more dire. As the race organizer, I was very concerned that severe weather would cause headaches all weekend. Not least of my worries was that I would be the one in a tent! On top of that I knew this weekend was the weekend of Jack Nicklaus’s Memorial Golf tournament which is notorious for suffering through rain and storms. (Something about an Indian curse for building the golf course on sacred land!)

Friday Night

Friday dawned clear and bright and Neva Hoover called at about 10:00 to say they were already building the course and everything would be set to walk when competitors showed up that evening. Tonya Smith had the popcorn machine and pressed a couple of turkey fryers into action to boil hotdogs. I got to the site around 4:45 and starting getting the registration area set up as well as starting to organize the registration welcome packets. Several local drivers came in to help out and the Zeislers came up to help with tech. At 5:30 we were serving Hotdogs, peanuts, popcorn and chips to our Friday night registrants. Thanks again to Mike and Tonya Smith who made sure we had plenty to eat. Thanks also to Tammy, Dianne Packard and Simi Ritch who were checking people in and handing out welcome packets. By 8:00 we were winding down and packing up for the predicted bad weather that was to come..

At 2:00 in the morning, as I was laying in my tent, I starting seeing flashes of lightning. I quickly bailed out and headed for the van only to see the wind pick up and pull my tent stakes right out of the ground. Back out I went into the gale and quickly rescued the tent before it departed for the east coast. I spent the rest of the night reclining comfortably in the dry van!

Saturday

By 7:00 on Saturday morning the storm had passed and everything was drying out. No damage was done to anything and I believe Team HART may have actually weathered the storm in their tent! Soon competitors were showing up and everyone was in high spirits with the sun peeking through the clouds. We enjoyed the variety of cars and classes that attended. I don’t think I have ever seen so many CM cars in one place and several other classes that are usually not at our local events participated as well.

By drivers meeting we had blue sky and we were off and running by about 9:45. The first heat was little rough as we worked through some timing issues, but by second heat we had found the rhythm and started moving quickly through the runs. On Saturday we did 5 runs with each run in the mid 40’s to low 50’s for most car classes. By late afternoon the wind was gusting up and we had a couple small delays to fix the timing boxes which had started to blow along the ground and to replace some radios which seemed to be malfunctioning. About that time I also had a report from a competitor that it was storming heavily at the golf tournament and they had halted play. At Cooper we still had blue sky with puffy clouds. We finished up at about 4:30 Saturday. Post competition we had several activities. The divisional chiefs met to talk about the divisional race, Raleigh Boreen put on a Safety Steward Seminar, and for the rest we brought in Pizzas to eat while Neva reworked the course to configure it for Sunday’s runs.

Sunday

On Sunday, even the weatherman was predicting clear and beautiful weather. All day it was in the low 80’s with a slight breeze. You couldn’t ask for better. We were able to get going little earlier than normal (At least for OVR) Sunday and had cars entering the course by 9:15. We still had the pace from Saturday and quickly moved from an announced 3 runs to 4 runs per heat. The course was very fast, but still had some technical bits. Typical time was now in the mid to low 40’s. We moved through the entire 147 driver field by 3:00. We finished up with trophy presentations and cleanup. By 4:00 most everyone was already on the road home. I want to thank all of my chiefs for a great event, as well as the members of the GASS committee and participants who gave me great feedback and advice all weekend. I also want to thank everyone who drove in from several hours away. It was very nice to meet everyone.We hope you enjoyed your visit with OVR and we hope that you will come back to race with us at a future event!

2008, June