October is a wonderful time for autocross. Especially at excellent venues like River Downs in Cincinnati. This past weekend made for a memorable event, as it essentially became a tri-region event between the Cincinnati, Western Ohio, and Central Kentucky regions. Once the event finished, the top four Pax finishers from each region would take two more runs. Their fastest runs would be added together and the region with the lowest score would win.

While that was guarenteed to be exciting, I did not expect my battle in STS to be as thrilling as it was. This event was an official joint event between WOR and Cincinnati, so my points would count in both regions. Considering I was in a position to win WOR and possibly clinch Cincy, I knew I had to be at my best.

Among seven competitors, I was most worried about Mike in his RSX and Daniel, a WOR member, in his Protege 5. I needed to score 2 more points than Daniel and finish as close to Mike as possible. Although the new Kumho XS have been very good so far, Mike's RSX generally has an advantage no matter what on Danny Popp courses.

All morning long, Mike and I one upped eachother, consistently pulling away from the rest of STS. Despite Mike having two reruns, he was unable to pull away from me. On my final run, I managed to finish just .056 behind his best time. It was easily one of my closest finishes all year long. Despite not winning, I prevented Mike from pulling away from me in the Cincinnati points race. It will all come down to the final event, where he must beat me by about 3 points, assuming we only count our best four events. However, if we count all five, I have about 15 points to give up.

Featured below is my fastest run, a 54.734: