Racing Byrds and Falken Tire Autocross Challenge

When the Racing Byrds came to us about joining them for another Autocross series we were pretty much immediately “IN”. When we found out that it would include qualifying and a shootout we were very excited to join the fun. What the first event ended up being was nothing short of the most fun we’ve had at an event in some time.

 On Saturday we were broken down into individual classes. Classic Muscle, Modern Muscle, Sports Car, Compact Car etc. We would compete for the fastest time of the day in each class. Also, your time would also be placed into a “RAW” class in order to qualify for the Sunday Shootout. In Classic Muscle Efrain Diaz in his killer yellow TCI Equipped ’69 Camaro would take top honors. Not only that he had a solid 6 tenths lead on the next closest competitor. Which just happened to be the super fast Fox Body Mustang of Gregg Biddlingmeier. Jason Wilcox driving Andy “The Nova Guy” Mule’s ’66 Nova would round out the podium. With Efrain’s fantastic time on Saturday it would qualify him 3rd overall for the shootout. Jason had a long battle all day trying to stay in the “Top 8” for qualifying. It literally came down to the final moments where Brian Stafford was pushing hard to bump his way into the field of Top 8. But in the end Brian would clip a cone and leave Jason in the final Top 8 spot. The Top 8 advantage for the shootout would be exponential. The Top 8 would face off against the slowest cars, or what Rob Byrd would call the “Non Winners” end of the bracket. The Top 8 would also get a 1st round bye.

Here are the Top 8 cars in order, left to right.

Efrain would face off against Guy Dreier in the Semi-Finals and end up 3rd for the day.

Jason would end up tied for 5th after taking himself out against Gregg.