This month is the beginning of the 2012 Driving Season, with the first events planned for the last weekend of April. Saturday 4/28 is the Spring Tune Up and on Sunday is the first Auto Cross. The Spring Tune Up is back to its original date because Quality Tires owner Mark Leuck's rescheduled agenda. See the separate announcement with the details of our season opener.

Joel-Paul Brossard is coordinating the 2012 Auto Cross events and the first one is sponsored by the Miata Club. There should be information in this issue of the Driveline, otherwise make sure you contact him or call me for the details.

At the last Club Meeting questions about what an Auto Cross exactly is came up. The 2012 Driving events General Rules describe a little bit what it is all about. But it is good to reiterate that Auto Cross is probably the safest form of motor sports. That is because you compete against a stopwatch, all alone on the course, no other cars around to cause dangerous situations, and nothing to hit except orange rubber cones. The speed is very low. MG A and B's are in second gear, a Midget might have to shift up to third once in a while. You do one lap runs that are around one minute in duration and you get a time penalty for touching a cone. Each driver gets several runs during the event and cars can easily be shared by multiple drivers. The field is divided in classes of comparable performance and the fastest time in each class wins. This type of driving event was very popular about 10 years ago. But since we lost access to the places we used to run at, they have been put in a holding pattern. Joel-Paul Brossard caught the spirit last year and is determined to bring Auto Cross back in 2012. Just in case you missed it, here is the link to Joel-Paul's report in the July issue of last year's Driveline. http://www.chicagolandmgclub.com/driveline10/0711/p07.html#autox

Mace the hound A mechanic had a dog named Mace. Mace had a bad habit of eating all the grass on the lawn so the mechanic kept him inside. The grass became overgrown. One day the mechanic dropped his wrench, losing it in the tall grass. That night, Mace escaped and ate all the grass. The next morning the mechanic went outside and saw his wrench glinting in the sunlight. Realizing what happened the mechanic proclaimed, “A grazing Mace, how sweet the hound, that saved a wrench for me.”

The week before is the Spring Drive of our sister club the Vintage MG Car Club of Chicago. Details are available at http://www.vintagemgchicago.com/2012SpringDrive.pdf
And on the first Sunday in May, club president Dino Perez will host the first Garage Tour. Details are elsewhere in this issue.

  This year's Spring Chicken Tour is hosted by club vice president George Phariss. As in previous years, the VMGCCC has a Spring Tour in the same weekend and you are invited to join them on Saturday. Detailed information is here
http://www.vintagemgchicago.com/springtour2012.pdf. The VMGCCC is also to enjoy some Chicken and MG tire kicking at the Chicken Party at George and Jana's house on Sunday.

In only a few paragraph's I have just described six events to let you drive your MG and enjoy the friendships of fellow MG drivers. Before the summer really starts on Memorial Day, the club offered one technical event, one speed event and four social/driving events. I hope that you already marked your calendars and that we can welcome you at all six.

I invite you also to call or e-mail me with any questions and suggestion at 847 342 9804 or reinoutvogt@gmail.com.

"The more you drive, the more you smile".

-- Reinout Vogt

PS:Please don't forget to check our face book page of club website for any last minute changes. The calendar of events that was inserted in the March Driveline has now been updated with the Auto Cross dates and a Race Track Instruction day with the Austin Healey Club on Friday July 27. Preliminary details here:
http://www.wrcresearch.com/trackday/BlackHawk_reg_2011.pdf