A murder of competitors descended on Crows Landing, California for the 2018 Tire Rack Crows Landing ProSolo® for a mirror image of Justin Tsang-designed courses. These courses featured some sublet offsets into huge crossovers across the runways. With the crossovers came many spins, tank slappers, and 4-wheel drifts as everyone tried to get their entry into the final slalom just right while aggressively carrying speed.

Arguably, the most exciting part of the weekend Final 4 during the Super Challenge. First up, Brian Coulson of C-Street versus Tony Rodriguez of SCC, who was the only person up until this paring to break out. Ultimately Coulson would red light, in this near heads up racing, with Tony moving on to the final pairing. To decide the third position, Coulson faced Mark Scroggs and when the first runs were done, they were separated by just .084-second, which would be even again by the launch of their second runs. Mark must have really chucked it across those sweepers, because on this last run he came in fast enough to break out and claim third place in the Challenge.  Moving on to the final paring, it would be Tony Rodriguez versus Alex Kang, driving the E Street Toyota MR2 that he bought from Rodriguez this year. In the end, it was Alex Kang by 0.7 second to take the Super Challenge win.

Solo Spec Coupe continues to provide well-subscribed and competitive classes with the top 3 competitors within a tenth of a second. As the pairs took to the course on Sunday morning, the lead changes came with almost every run. On his last run, Max Hayter would red light a run that would have been almost half a second faster, leaving Tony Rodriguez in the lead by 0.047 second. Mike Simyani finished in third 0.038 second behind Hayter, while Ed Runnion claimed fourth.

Ladies 3 was also decided Sunday morning as almost every run was faster than Saturday’s. Kate Fisher was having some trouble with her STR car, so she jumped in Manfred Reysser’s STX car and drove it to a second-place finish just 0.284 second behind leader Jessica Pao, scoring her second L3 win of the year.

STR proved to be a fierce battle and showed that you need to be clean on course with three drivers having the raw times to win. Only Jonathan Lugod could cut clean lights and clean times to take the win. Just 0.368 second behind was Ken Montonishi with Peter Loney only one hundredth behind in third place. Kevin Dietz, driving the only S2000 to trophy, picked up the fourth spot while Kevin Pao finished off the trophy positions five thousandths behind in fifth.

Peter Bollenbecker would take the win in S1, but the story of second place highlights a special part of autocross, the comradery between competitors. With issues cropping up in the Berry Family Racing ASP Evo, Stan Kowalski lent his SM Evo to Christine and Lisa for their L1 runs, but it also developed an electrical issue, which had Marshall Grice wrenching on the SM car with Mike Nakata. Ultimately co-driver Mike Nakata wouldn’t have the car working for his Saturday runs with seven DNS’s, but with the issues resolved after hours of wrenching, Nakata finally enjoyed the AWD launch and grip through the crossovers on Sunday to take place second place in S1.

Complete results from the 2018 Tire Rack Crows Landing ProSolo can be found here.

Challenge Winners:
-Super Challenge: Alex Kang, E Street
-Ladies Challenge: Nicole Wong, Ladies 1
-Bonus Challenge: Teddie Alexandrova, Ladies 3
-CAM Challenge: Jordan Priestley