Has anyone run The Gauntlet?

The Gauntlet

I saw this posted elsewhere with no replies and never heard of it before myself, but it looks cool.

Every month a professionally designed course is setup for autocross, and you compete all month on the same course. They have typical autocross schedules like a weekly league, offer course rentals, and have open track days as well.

I like the idea personally, you can't always make the adjustments you need to over one day of a course, so there's lots of time and room for trial and error and dialing in over the month.

Cool idea if you can go on like Wednesday nights and run with a team of buddies.

Like bowling.

Wait ... what? That's like 5 minutes from me. It's a mall parking lot? I haven't seen anything other that an occasional Sunday autocross there.

Its not a Gauntlet without Sondra Locke, Clint, and a bus.

Yes, it caught our eye, too.

Their website says open Fridays and Saturdays. I'll swing by and see what's going on this week.

I hope it's successful and they start franchising. It'd be cool to have an alternative to putt-putt golf and increasing interest in autocross is a good thing.

How have I not heard about this... I drive past that old mall at least twice a day.

pimpm3 wrote: How have I not heard about this... I drive past that old mall at least twice a day.

Because there isn't a donut shop in the lot?

patgizz wrote:

pimpm3 wrote: How have I not heard about this... I drive past that old mall at least twice a day.

Because there isn't a donut shop in the lot?

oh, burn.

So it's an old mall?

That makes some rules strange, they sounded like track rules to me so I thought it was a complex of some sort.

Example: closed face sa2010 helmets only, no convertibles without roll bars or cages.

Those 2 lines just had me thinking track.

patgizz wrote:

pimpm3 wrote: How have I not heard about this... I drive past that old mall at least twice a day.

Because there isn't a donut shop in the lot?

Even more so...isn't there a Sheriff's Office Sub Station right in that mall or parking lot?

Autox in a Mall Parking lot is a short term proposition. Locally, we used to autox in an old mall. Keep in mind, zero was being spent to repave or maintain the lot. The space was excellent but the pavement eventually eroded to the point of being unusable.

Yep, old mall. The space was until lately used by NCCC and PCA clubs for autocross, in conjunction with a car museum. The museum left but the property owners have continued to contract with the clubs to use the lots. I think they changed lots, but whatever. For now they are signaling the space will remain available and unaffected by redevelopment plans. Past performance, and etc. but nice to have as long as it lasts. All the clubs lost access to St. John's River state college police and fire dept training facility near St. Augustine a while back.

In reply to John Welsh :

Yes and this mall isn't exactly up and coming. There's a reason that police substation is located there.

We just went by and didn't see any type of autocross setup.

There will be an NCCC autox there this Saturday the 22nd.

In reply to conesare2seconds:

Is that part of The Gauntlet or a separate thing?

The sponsoring club rented Gauntlet's space/facility/whatever to put on the event. Gauntlet isn't providing course design or set up though.

In reply to conesare2seconds:

Do you know if they're going to set up a course like they say on the site? What time are y'all going to be there? I might be able to come watch for a bit.

Course setup will start by 7, registration 7:30-8:45, drivers' meeting 8:45 and first car out at 9:00. They usually finish around 2 but can range from 1:30 to 2:30 depending on number of entries. The Corvette club is doing their own course layout. Spectators are fine (last time I checked), just be sure to sign the liability waiver. You'll be safe, it's just an insurance requirement. If you miss this one, next NCCC event at that location is June 10th.

My sig says NFCA but I'm in Arkansas now. We keep in touch though.

In reply to conesare2seconds:

Don't tell Ovid_and_Flem but I'd love to see some Corvettes in action.

so I'm bringing this back because it was just in the news.

It seems like the SCCA Tampa region didn't like them raising their rates to match other local places, and bombed their online reviews claiming an unsafe track. Possibly related, some persons dumped 30lbs of roofing nails over the entire everything right after the group cancelled their reservations and started bombing the reviews from a 5.0 down to a 1.5.

Here's the link

It's an entertaining read, but it does raise a lot of questions and I think makes racing on the whole look kind of bad from the childish actions of a few people.

Wow... that's.. err.. well.. doesn't reflect positively on the buccaneer region, that's for sure.

It would be better inside the mall.

WonkoTheSane wrote: Wow... that's.. err.. well.. doesn't reflect positively on the buccaneer region, that's for sure.

It sounds like it will reflect negatively on the SCCA as a whole if they don't find out who's responsible and take appropriate action.