by Darren Darby
“Man it's hot. It's like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot.”
The Tire Race SCCA National Tour made it’s seventh stop of 2011 in Blytheville, Arkansas for the Southern States Championships. Hosted at the Arkansas Aeroplex in conjunction with the 8th annual Cars and Cycles Against Cancer fund raiser, this event saw 150 competitors battle it out in the Arkansas heat. Displaying its usual outstanding support for SCCA participants, the city of Blytheville provided tour participants a welcome party featuring free dinner, entertainment, and the opportunity to wander around the car/bike show on Friday night. Heat management of drivers, workers, tires, and engines was paramount to success. The local EMS even brought out water for drivers and workers as heat indexes climbed over 100 degrees on Saturday. Then, Saturday night around 6:30 PM when most of the drivers had left to partake of some of the local cuisine, a microburst came through the event site wreaking havoc on everything. Most pop ups were blown away, all the cones on course and paddock were blown down, awnings were torn from RVs, even a generator was blown over. Local news reported the winds at 45-60MPH and the resulting damage backs that up. The Lincoln Driver’s center saw some damage, but it seems the SCCA equipment was mostly spared. Utilizing more of the event site than ever before, the courses were fast, wide open and flowing. From the huge sweeper that stretched from one end of the runway to the other, to the high-speed “walloms” and wide-open slalom, the course provided participants plenty of challenges and opportunities. Seizing the opportunity a low-turnout provided, a “Bonus Challenge” was conducted on Saturday afternoon pairing top finishers from the day’s competition in a single elimination battle. Winners received certificates for free entry to next year’s Blytheville National Tour. The results of the challenges are shown on the Blytheville results page (without times). In E Stock, Defending National Champion Bartek Borowski of Elmwood Park, IL took a 3.195 second lead on his competition, laying down an overall time that would have put him in 2nd place in X-Prepared. Street Touring Roadster, the largest class at this event, changed the lead no less than four times across four different drivers with only .703 separating the top four drivers. The longer, faster course appeared to favor the S2000 drivers given seven of the top 10 cars wore the Honda marquee. Geoff Walker of Murfreesboro, TN continued his class success by taking the win in the 26-car class. Marc Pfannenschmidt and Matthew Glagola both jumped classes from BS for this event and seemed to enjoy the additional modifications of the STR-prepped cars, coming in 2nd and 3rd. David Marcus continues to show the second-generation Miata has a chance with his 5th place trophy finish. Carter Thompson from the Tennessee Region seems to have exercised some previous mechanical demons, taking the win in Super Street Modified by a margin of 2.845 seconds over fellow-TN region member Brian Johns. Street Touring Ultra saw the lowest margin of victory and the lowest gap between the trophied drivers. Luke Oxner of Red River Region saw just a .092 lead over Tom Sotiropoulos of St. Louis with the top four drivers having only a .184 difference in times.
