If you're going to Lincoln Nebraska for the 2024 Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Championships you should check out RainbowMarks Photography's pre-event photo package!

Vote for me in the St. Louis Region Sports Car Club Of America elections!

Driver: Chris Hammond
Car: 2016 Scion FR-S
Class: SSC (Solo Spec Coupe)
Event: St. Louis Region 2020 Solo #3

Old footage from Goddard Kansas, Lake Afton, taken by Bill Hammond August 12th and 13th, 1972

Vintage car racing, back when it wasn't vintage!

Here we are, January 1st (or 2nd) 2019, and I haven’t done a year in review for 2018. This post will have to suffice, it’ll be abbreviated, 2018 was a busy year, lots of change, lots of excitement, far too much to cover in the 10 minutes I’ve allotted myself for this post tonight. This post won’t cover family items, for those you can check out all my Facebook posts.

This weekend Dave and I headed down to Blytheville Arkansas for the first SCCA ProSolo of the 2014 season. I haven’t given autocross much though since Nationals in September, the primary thought I have had since then is that I figured I wouldn’t autocross much this year. The local SCCA region really put a damper on my autocross spirits last year, so I figured I might run a few National level events, but few if any local events.

Warning, a little bit of unsolicited SCCA ProSolo propaganda: tl;dr Do a ProSolo, they are damn fun. The next ProSolo is March 22-23 in Blytheville Arkansas, more info at https://cjh.am/arprosolo If you've never done a SCCA ProSolo event, you are missing out. It is some of the most fun you can experience in the sport of Autocross, it can get your blood pumping like a normal autocross can’t.

8 years ago today I was sleeping in my hotel room in Topeka Kansas, getting ready to wake up and drive to the Kansas Speedway to meet Dale Jr. A good friend of mine was working for DEI (Dale Earnhardt Inc.) at the time doing engineer stuff (that’s what he is) and the team was at Kansas Speedway doing testing for upcoming races.

I was in Topeka Kansas for the SCCA Solo Nationals (which are now held in Lincoln Nebraska, this week, I’m sad I am not there), and had an off day, one in which I wasn’t racing or working. So I was excited to get to the opportunity to go up to the raceway and meet Dale Earnhardt Jr. I had just left my gig at The Sporting News a few months earlier, and I was still into NASCAR at the time, I had even been writing a column with my good buddy Roger Kuznia where we went head 2 head on a Nascar topic each week (don’t judge me based on what you read!).

Unfortunately, that morning I woke up with the TV on and it ended up being September 11th, 2001. It was a rough morning for our nation, and the world. I ended up staying at the hotel for a few hours, watching all the coverage, internally thinking to myself, what if we’re at war, what is going to happen next. Eventually I got myself out of the hotel and headed off to the speedway to try to meet up with Dale Jr., but as I was just about to get on the highway I got a call from James, my buddy, saying that they were headed home, because the airlines were all shut down they packed up the semi trucks and all hit the road back to North Carolina.

So I headed down to Forbes Field in Topeka where the Solo Nationals were held, and hung out there until we were all kicked off the base for a couple of days. Gas prices in Topeka skyrocketed, above 4 dollars a gallon at some places, grocery stores were flooded, I remember I went to the liquor store that day to get some whiskey. A couple days later the Solo Nationals continued, in a much shortened version.

8 Years later, the Solo Nationals are still going on, the world is still reeling from the impact of 9/11, and I’m married to a beautiful lady living in Colorado. Things have changed!

Here's a photo of my car at Nationals in 2001

So I got 3 videos posted from the autocross this past weekend in Cecil Georgia. I've yet to get a chance to setup a good way to view the videos on www.corvettez06.org, so until I do I'll link to them from here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHg4Htdav7g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWYyCO8TdD8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWeKxfTsIzA

Here's my blog post about the event

A quick post as I have way too much work to catch up on! Dave and I made it back from Georgia early in the morning. Natalie came and picked me up and I think we made it to bed around 3am. Much earlier than I had expected. We made the trip back from Adel Georgia in 11 hours, the trip down took 13 hours with the ice storm and rain most of the way. More on then race later tonight when I get to blog on Corvettez06.org

It's 5:30am, why am I up so early?

Today started out alright. Breakfast at IHOP, headed to the event site to unload the car and mount tires. Car up on the jack, tires off the driver's side. Time to adjust the shocks. That is when it all went to hell. Head on over to www.corvettez06.org to find out...

So, the 2007 Solo Nationals are halfway complete. Natalie and I took another hour of video today, more stuff to go through next week!  A quick summary of the day. Bud finally got a clean run today, so that made 1 out of his 6 runs in CS cone free. I ran what I thought was well but not well enough. I was in 9th at the beginning of the day, 11th at the end of the day. Lynn Collins got 2nd in CSL, a few tenths out of 1st I believe. Time for bed, it's been a long week so far! posted from...

Today was an interesting day. It started out dark, cold and wet, finished up bright sunny and almost hot. It rained last night a bit, so the course was wet this morning when we were walking first thing. I ran in CS today, the 5th car or so out in the 2nd heat on the West course. It started drizzling just as I was getting ready. Every run I took was a different surface, the rain came, went, came and went, multiple times throughout the heat. I ended up sitting in 9th, there are 7 trophy positions so I've got some work to do tomorrow! I took a LOT of video today, I'll try to get it posted next week when I get back in town. posted from...

Good news for me! After taking a year off of Nationals in 2006 I'm once again headed to Topeka for a week in September! I registered this morning in CStock in a 2007 Pontiac Solstice! The Collins have asked me to codrive this year in Topeka, a great honor for me to be asked. Bud was also mentioned as a contender for the CS National Championship so I'm doublely honored to get the opportunity to assist him in doing so. I booked my hotel for the week in Topeka this morning and registered for #63 CS as well! More on my Nationals adventure coming up here online! Also, I want to thank Nick Jackson for also offering me a ride in his STS Civic at Nationals. While I had looked forward to trying my hand at a FWD car at Nationals again (my first two tries I think left me with DFL both times) I couldn't turn down the opportunity to drive a RWD stock car, one that has a great chance at winning to boot! See you all at Nationals, and look for reports from our crack reporting staff this year in Topeka! posted from...

Well, it's not really "mine", but the company who developed the hitch I use on my car is now selling them to other folks. https://www.tuxedoparkracing.com/350zhitch.html If you've got any questions please feel free to ask, I'll try to answer any that I can. I've towed my 6x8 trailer with this for well over a year now. Even hauled THREE sets of wheels/tires down to Walnut Ridge Arkansas earlier this year. I generally take two sets, tools, chair, cooler, bike, etc on the 6x8. I've hauled some weight with this thing. We've even taken the time to remove the hitch for events, though most of the time I just leave it on the car and run with the extra weight in the back. posted from...

Well, the trip to Denver wasn't half bad. I flew Frontier Airlines and was surprised to see TVs in all of the head rests! Sure, it was $5 for 24 channels for the flight, but they had a free channel I watched that played some interesting short films. I got to Denver, after one of the bumpiest flights I've ever had, but who cares, I got to watch TV :D Went to Hertz and got my rental car, get this , I picked a ............ FORD......I'm driving a V6 Mustang Vert, automatic to top it off. This thing has NO power. I tried revving it in neutral and it stops at 4k, if you drop it into drive the motor revs down and then shifts. For a short time I was entered in GStock in the Mustang. I got here and all the classes I was hoping would need a 5th driver to make a complete class had filled up before I got there. I was fairly down, figuring I was going to be stuck in the stang for the weekend, which would have been against my Hertz agreement :D Chris K offered up his IS300 in DS if I didn't find another ride. I ended up putting up a sign on the registration trailer with my cell phone number. Thankfully Adam (from www.autocrossforum.com) came up to me and told me about the car he's driving. He told me the car owner was open to having someone run the car in another class, so I spoke to Aaron Boltman. I'm now signed up to run his 2004 Corvette Z06 in ASP tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it, I think there are 8 drivers now entered in ASP, I'm looking forward to see how I fare! Aaron and Adam will be running the car in SS. Thanks to both Aaron and Adam, I look forward to running with you guys tomorrow! posted from...

Here are my runs from today, except for Run 4, which of course would have been the cool one because I hit cones on the camera side, but of course I checked to make sure the camera was recording right before I ran, and apparently turned it off. For some reason the videos aren't working here, you can view them here.   Posted from...

If you're interested in the sport of Autocross be sure to check out the Autocross FAQ provided by SCCAForums.com! Posted from...

I saw this post from J-O this evening. Content parts are pretty useful within CS as J-O states. Here's another great use for them. On SCCAForums.com I needed an easy way to put some common navigation on a majority of the pages. I ended up creating a common contentpart on the SCCAForums.com pages that allows me to easily manage this navigation from within the browser. Posted from...

I took the oil pan off the L28ET motor tonight to try to get inside and see what all I could find out about the motor. I've posted a few pictures over in the 240 photo gallery, check them out, let me know what you think of what you see. https://sccaforums.com/photos/christoc/category1053.aspx Here are some of the recently uploaded...

Yet another reason to not track your street car. https://videos.streetfire.net/video/D913F445-B773-42E8-B23C-5D7B82294422.htm posted from...