Miata-MG Autocross
Alexian Field, Schaumburg, IL - July 29, 2012


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There were only three MGs at the event. I drove my 1971 MG Midget (#3), Rajbinder Sandhu was there with his 1972 MG Midget (#215), and a non member named Alex Wilson was there with a 1977 MG Midget (#936). This was the first Chicagoland MG Club driving event in the many years I've been a part of the club where the marque was entirely represented by the modern Midget. I couldn't help but wonder where all the MGBs were. Alex was in group C, while Raj and I were in Group B. All of us Raced in class T with the other Non-Miatas under 2.5 liters.

Of the three MGs my car was the only one to perform without any mechanical difficulty. Raj's car features a Webber DGV conversion that suffers from vapor lock problems, and the 1500 Midget with its original single Zenith Stromburg carb setup suffered from the same problem. After setting a time of 1:05.496 seconds, Rajbinder's car stalled due to vapor lock and he decided to call it quits.

I started with a time of 1:08 and some change as had been trying to best raj in the first half. With raj gone, and my time dropping below raj's time I set my sights on Alex's very fast time of around 1:02.6 and managed to get my time down to 1:01.957. Alexes time was helped by his wise decision to unbolt his front bumper and reduce his cars weight by around 90lbs! After getting my second set of runs in, it began to rain, and I hoped that it would rain hard enough to assure me victory over the 1500. However, the rain let up and Alex managed a very fast time of 100.338. None of us took home any ribbons or trophy mugs since we were up against Honda Civics, Cheys, Toyotas, etc. Next time we really must get 5 cars there so we can race in an MG class.

Final results for MGs: - (only the fastest runs are shown here). Driver No. Car Time Alex Wilson (non member) 936 1977 MG Midget 1:00.338 Seth Jones 3 1971 MG Midget 1:01.957 Rajbinder Sandhu 215 1973 MG Midget 1:05.496