I have to do a little bit of thinking to remember exactly how many times I’ve attended the Grassroots Motorsports $2000 Challenge. My first time was in 2005 when I went with Tim and the CRX. I returned the next year with my own entry, the Neon, and then took a break from all things motorsports for a while due to having my first daughter born not long after the 2006 challenge. In 2011, I came back with Tim and that inspired me to bring the Neon a second time in 2012 for some redemption. I provided the towing services for Robert’s Rampage in 2017. And then I drove the Miata down to join Tim’s team with the Impala in 2020. By my count that makes the 2023 $2000 Challenge my seventh. It was also far and away the best time I’ve had so far.

The car certainly was not competitive in the 54-car field by any stretch. In terms of the autocross, the car was 41st. In terms of drag times, it was also 41st. The car did much better in the concours judging, ranking 18th overall – but none of the overbudget cars were eligible for judging, so that was really only out of 31 cars. In the under-budget classes, we were 21st out of 31 and in our own class – Great Tire Narrow, underbudget – we were exactly in the middle – 7th out of 13. Ironically, that is the second time that I’ve managed a finish at the Challenge exactly in the middle of my class – in 2012, the Neon was the exact middle finisher as well.

If I look at just my own class, the Saab scored the seventh-best autocross time, the 9th best drag time, and the 7th best Concours score. Overall, including all the scores in all the classes and excluding the cars that didn’t actually run at the event, we were 25th out of 54.

The best part for me was watching my daughter give our presentation to the Concours judges. We could have taken a default score of 12 by just putting a “Don’t Judge Me” note on the car. There’s nothing on the car that represents any kind of amazing modification or radical improvement. The specialness of the car is that it was a derelict that was destined to rot in a back yard for decades until we dragged it home, spent a few hours over a couple months getting it road-worthy, and now it’s a very nice looking car that we just completed a 1600 mile road trip in along with 5 autocross runs and a half-dozen drag passes. But I believe that every car should compete in all three events – how much better could we have done if I could have chosen to take an average drag race score! My daughter practiced her speech and we wound up with a 12.75 average score which is what pushed us up into 7th place. I’m a very proud papa.

No, it wasn’t the car that made this the best challenge yet. It was the people and the relationships. Yes, we got a lot of compliments on the car and lots of people wanted to come and talk about it. But it was having that chance to see people that I only get to talk to on the forums. And to come together and work on the parking lot build. And more than that, the Father-Daughter time that I got to spend. And like Dom says, it’s all about family.