President’s Column, April 2008

by Bob Morin

On March 8th, Jim & Maria Hurczyn hosted a Wine & Cheese Party at their home in Bristol, CT. Once again this year they opened their home for this event, which becomes an annual sign that Spring is just around the corner and Winter has almost come to a close. Unfortunately, we were away and unable to attend this year, but we heard it was a good turnout with lots of food and beverage and plenty of good conversation. Thanks again to Jim & Maria for hosting this event.

By the time you read this, our first Driver’s School of 2008 and the first under the new schedule necessitated by the shared nature of the event with the Club at Lime Rock Park, will be history. Because of the reduced number of students that it now takes to fill the school, we decided to go back to our old registration policy of allowing CVC members the opportunity to register earlier than non – CVC members. The result was that the school was sold out in 48 hours after registration opened.

The other Driver’s School news is that our June 27th date was canceled due to paving that will be taking place at Lime Rock Park. As part of the paving, there will some revision to the configurations of the track to better accommodate both the Rolex Series cars and the ALMS cars. This date was replaced however, and we now have August 22nd as our second Driver’s School.

Eight days after our first Driver’s School, we will have the Top Gear Party at the Morin’s home in North Granby, CT on April 19th. The next event on the schedule so far is the Street Survival School we will host on June 29th. New board member Jim Merriman has taken the helm on this event and is well into the planning already. The venue will change this year, to Rentschler Field, which should give us more space with which to work.

The F1 season has kicked off and I must admit it’s going much better than I expected. Australia kicked off the schedule and the BMW boys weren’t showing too much through the first two practices. There was much improvement by the third practice and then in qualifying, Robert Kubica came in second, by the slimmest of margins to Lewis Hamilton, and that was after running wide near the end of his run, or the pole would have surely been his. Heidfeld qualified 5th behind Kovalainen in the McLaren and Massa in the Ferrari. Alonso, back with Renault, where there is no doubt he is the number one driver on the team, so that makes his ego work, qualified 11th. Personally, I’d rather be a co-number one or even a number two on one of the top teams, but that’s just me. I say he got what he deserves and Kovalainen must be ecstatic about swapping seats with the whiner to be a number two at McLaren. Of course, Alonso has a clause allowing him out of his Renault contract, should the car fail to perform (to whose standard?). Unfortunately for Kubica, his pit strategy didn’t work too well, especially in light of all the Safety Car periods and he found himself in the pack during one such period, where he was run into from behind by Kazuki Nakajima and that ended his race. Heidfeld however, worked his way up to 2nd position behind Hamilton, while Nico Rosberg in the Williams Toyota rounded out the podium. Only six cars finished in the wild race and I couldn’t be happier that the two Ferraris were among the DNFs.

Malaysia was next up and only a week later, making a difficult start to the season, especially for those teams who had problems in Australia. Here the Ferraris regained their composure and qualified on the front row, with Massa beating out Räikkönen, while Jarno Truli surprised more than a few people to take 3rd on the grid, thanks to a penalty of five grid positions for the two McLaren drivers for balking Heidfeld on his hot lap during Q3. The penalty also moved Kubica up to 4th and Heidfeld to 5th. Massa led until the first round of pit stops, but as he was lighter on fuel load, he pitted before his teammate and after the exchange of all pit stops had taken place, found himself in 2nd behind Räikkönen. Kubica could not keep up with the Ferraris, but remained a solid 3rd, until Massa, spun off on his own and beached himself in the gravel trap, moving Robert up to 2nd, where he would finish, Kovalainen rounding out the top three. Heidfeld could only manage 6th, after starting 5th, but took some consolation in turning fast lap of the race. So, after two rounds, BMW Sauber is solidly in 2nd place in the Constructor’s Championship with 19 points, trailing McLaren’s 24 points, but 8 up on Ferrari’s 11 points, while Hamilton leads the Driver’s Championship with Räikkönen and Heidfeld tied for 2nd, and Kovalainen and Kubica next. Last year BMW seemed to have a lock on 4th place at each race. This year they seem to have the same lock on 2nd, at least so far. BMW Sauber seems to have made up a lot of ground since early testing and the word is that the car is difficult to set up correctly, but fast if you can get the set up right. Meanwhile, without the driver’s aids due to the rules changes, especially no traction control, we have adventures like Massa’s spin from to second place to keep things interesting.

In News From National, membership stands at 75,828, up 5 members from last month, but down .28% from last year. The National election results were reported and Bruce Hazard is the new President (running unopposed), Mark Calabrese, the incumbent, won over challenger Len Mueller for Executive Vice-President, and John Sullivan (also unopposed) remains our Regional Vice-President. In the only other contested position (although we couldn’t vote for this one) Mark Doran defeated J.R. Schneider for South Central Vice-President. Voter turnout was significantly higher than recent elections, so that is a good thing. Congratulations to all. By the way, when Bruce takes over as President in March, he will vacate his current position as Club Secretary and the board will appoint someone to be Secretary for the remainder of that term. Oktoberfest this year will be at Watkins Glen from September 23rd to the 28th. To keep you informed, you may subscribe to the Ofest08 Mailing List. This is an announcement only list. To subscribe to this list, send a message to: ofest08-request@bmwccaofest.org with the word subscribe as the subject. Also, the 2008 O’fest website is up and running, you can find it at www.bmwccaofest.org.

That should fill my space for another month.

Bob Morin