2012 July.indd - Tarheel Chapter BMW Car Club of America

CLUB RACING REPORT
BY PAUL HOECKE
BW’s Podium, Pippy Percevers
These days, it may seem as if we’re always
starting this column with a disclaimer or two.
Rest assured; we’re not making it a habit. But
we do need to begin by correcting a goof in last
month’s CR report.
Contrary to what we said in our coverage of
the race at VIR, it was Dennis Pippy, not Shane
Gunn who won M3T in the endurance race. We’re
not entirely at fault in this; we were blindsided
by the initial results posted right after the race,
which listed Pippy as a DQ. However, as it turned
out, Pippy’s first-place finish in the class was reinstated
later when the DQ judgment was reversed
– but only well after we had filed our report. We
apologize for the error, especially to Shane, who
ran a great race.
Since the VIR race, there have been three CR
events in which our local racing crowd was represented
– and about which we have at least some
information: The Stan Parker Memorial Race at
Watkins Glen in early May; the Premier North
Central Region race at Mid-Ohio the last weekend
in May; and the race at NJMP the first weekend in
June.
The Glen race, a North Atlantic Premier Event
hosted by the Genesee Chapter, was a pretty big
affair. It drew 68 drivers who got to compete in
four races. However, only one local hot shoe, Dennis
Pippy showed up for the event. One of four
competitors in M3T, he ran in all four races with
pretty good results; i.e. a class win in one sprint,
which he finished leading a small parade of M3T
rivals; two second-place finishes in the other two
sprint races; and a third place in the enduro.
The field at the Mid-Ohio event was sizable
too – 53 registered drivers, including five from
our neck of the woods: Roman Lifson (IP), Sean
McKay (IS), and Gunn in M3T; plus Jason Crist
and James Clay, who (along with John Capestro-
Dubets) must have been there to co-drive or otherwise
support buddies (or clients), since neither
one was listed as having brought his own car. But
that’s all we can tell you at this point. For some
reason, race results were still unavailable more
than a week after the event, long after this report
had to be filed. We hope the delay was due to
nothing more serious than snafus in scoring.
Pretty much the same goes for last month’s
race at NJMP’s Thunderbolt circuit. As we went to
press, the only detail we had about it is that the
44-driver field included only one local hot shoe
– Pippy again, competing against five other M3T
drivers. In fact, he was the only driver from our
entire region! Evidently, he is pretty serious about
shooting for the class championship this season.
We expect to have the missing results from
Watkins Glen and NJMP in our next issue. We also
hope some of you were able to wheedle a pass
of some kind to the club race at VIR a couple of
weeks ago. A joint undertaking by our chapter
with the Delaware Valley folks, in conjunction with
the PCA, the event offered local racing fans a rare
opportunity to watch the season’s second club
race at our home track. But if you weren’t there,
we do expect to have chapter and verse about the
event in a future report.
Finally, as the 2012 CR season reaches its
midpoint, it seems appropriate to comment on
the ongoing changes in CR’s character, as evidenced
by the mix of cars and classes we’ve been
seeing on area tracks. From where we sit, it’s clear
these are gradual, maybe evolutionary changes.
On the one hand, we hear of cars that used to
figure prominently in local competition but are
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