President’s Column, June 2008

by Bob Morin

On March 30th, New Country Motorcars played host to the Chapter with what started out as a 1 series Ride & Drive and turned into a test drive extravaganza. The event sold out and New Country General Manager Tim Parker added more cars and it sold out again and so the process continued. At the last minute, one final car was even added as a charity fund raiser and we were able to see a nice contribution to our ALS fund. As we were away, Sheila and I regrettably missed this event, but it was certainly a resounding success with members driving the new 1 series, the new E92 M3, several Dinan tuned cars and more. Thank you to Jim Merriman for organizing this event and to all the Chapter volunteers who helped keep the event flowing that day and to Tim Parker and everyone at New Country for their hospitality and for letting us play with their toys.

Our first Driver’s School of the year was April 11th at Lime Rock Park. Under the new format, where we share the day with members of The Club at Lime Rock Park, we weren’t exactly sure how things would work out. We planned for what we thought would happen, but we weren’t 100% sure it would work. I’m happy to say, it worked out splendidly. The event sold out in about 36 hours, with only Chapter members as students, so if you are thinking about attending the August 22nd event; you should register as soon as registration opens. Thanks to our Driver’s School team of Steve Wasley, the registrar, Wally Thomas, the chief driving instructor and Frank Giacalone, the coordinator for the great event.

On April 19th, we held the Top Gear Party at our home in North Granby. This event also sold out as we hit the limit of 30 people that we thought we could comfortably handle for such an event. Many participants had never seen the show before that night and there were lots of laughs as we shared some of our favorite episodes.

Planning continues for our upcoming Street Survival Teen Driving School on June 29th at Rentschler Field. If you would like to volunteer to help that day, please contact Jim Merriman to see how you can help. So much has been said and written recently about all of the senseless teenage carnage on the Connecticut highways and byways and this is one way we can help do our part to help eliminate some of it.

Since my last column, BMW Sauber has continued its quest for F1 success. Bahrain was next up and the weekend started quite positively for the BMW boys when Robert Kubica took the first pole of his career and the first for the team. The grid was the usual top three teams up front, but instead of what we were accustomed to, an all Ferrari front row, all McLaren second row, all BMW third row, we got a BMW on the pole with Massa’s Ferrari second, Hamilton in the McLaren could only manage third with Räikkönen beside him in the other Ferrari, followed by Kovalainen in the second McLaren and finally Heidfeld in the second BMW. Unfortunately, Robert was unable to hold his spot for the race and could only manage third with Heidfeld moving up to fourth. Kubica was only 4.9 seconds behind winner Massa. It was yet another podium for the Sauber boys though and 11 more points were enough to keep them ahead of McLaren in the Manufacturer’s Championship.

Spain was next up and here things weren’t so rosy. First, it was Fernando Alonso’s home race and Renault was determined to give his fans something to cheer about, so they loaded up the car with enough fuel to run a couple of laps and sent him out to run for pole. It was looking good for a while, but in the end, Räikkönen just edged him out. Of course, his strategy would require him to stop quite early and that put him back before an engine failure would force his retirement from the race. The BMW boys could only qualify 4th and 9th, with Kubica again out qualifying his more experienced teammate. In the end, the race results had Ferrari one-two with Hamilton filling out the podium, but Kubica continued to be strong with a 4th place, while Heidfeld just missed the points coming home 9th. The team is still in good shape in the Manufacturer’s Championship and both drivers are well placed in the Driver’s Championship, but the competition is getting tighter. A quick look at the grid shows that even the last row cars are now closer to the pole times than the third or fourth row was last year, so the boys at Sauber better keep improving if they hope to achieve their goal of winning a race this year.

In News from National, membership now stands at 75,989, down .16% from last year. The National Board has voted to increase dues for Associate Members from $5 to $10 per year. This change went into effect May 1st. You should be receiving information on this year’s BMW CCA raffle soon and there are some changes from previous raffles. The biggest change is that there will be three levels of prizes. The grand prize will be the BMW of your dreams up to an MSRP of $100,075 with first prize being any BMW up to an MSRP of $60,000 and, depending upon the number of tickets sold, there will likely be several main prizes of any BMW up to an MSRP of $42,000. The current membership drive continues with more info at the BMW CCA website. The Oktoberfest website (www.bmwccaofest.org) is up and running and registration is open, so what are you waiting for?

That’s about it for another month…

Bob Morin