Competing in a bucket list event: Lone Pine Time Trials

While there are certainly a few autocross events that are truly “events”–The Tire Rack SCCA Solo Nationals certainly comes to mind–the reality is the number of truly “destination” autocrosses is probably lower than the number of those types of events in other disciplines.

Which is why I’ve always wanted to compete in the Lone Pine Time Trials.

The genre of “outlaw autocross,” which is something I just made up, is an intriguing descriptor for an event that exists outside the traditional structure of SCCA-style, big parking lot/airfield Solo courses and puts the sport into an unusual or special context.

Back in the Council of Motorsports Clubs days, we put on several street autocrosses, which would (legally) take over public roads and operate as downtown festivals, bringing a grand prix vibe to small towns. Of course, we didn’t invent that. Clubs in the Midwest and West Coast had been doing them for years, but that was largely my first exposure to the format.

There was also a super-cool event on Sugarloaf Key, just north of Key West, called the Bay Bottom Crawl (you can read more about it in the very first issue of Auto-X), which tossed autocross maneuvers onto a road through a mangrove swamp. It was the only event where you’d get a view of the Atlantic and a view of the Gulf of Mexico over the course of a single run. I was fortunate enough to compete in that event as well, before the road became too torn up by nature to continue.

But I love these types of events, so clearly Lone Pine has been on my radar for a while. And as you read this, I’m probably on a Delta flight to LAX en route to competing in my first ever Lone Pine Time Trials, 55 years after the first one took place.

The Manzanar Airfield, about 10 miles north of Lone Pine proper and the location for the Lone Pine TT for its entire history, was built as a WWII-era training facility in 1939. After the war, however, the facility languished without much purpose or maintenance. The military still used it occasionally for training, and the film industry, which leaned heavily on the nearby Alabama Hills area for countless Westerns, occasionally used the field as a filming or staging location for productions. But, mostly, it was just another unused, unloved chunk of WWII infrastructure.

And, for the most part, it still is, except for the one time a year when area sports car nuts descend on the field for the time trial. Well, actually, make that two times a year, because the real start of each spring’s events starts a month or so earlier when competitors gather for cleanup weekend.

The course is weeded with a home-built scraper pulled behind a truck, broken pavement is patched with concrete and epoxy, and countless other flora and fauna are gently placed back into the surrounding desert to expose largely the same course layout that’s been run for more than half a century.

The course, which is defined by pylons but is a far higher-speed affair than the typical SCCA-style autocross, isn’t the only unique thing about the event. Nestled between the green, snowcapped Sierras and Mount Whitney to the west and the more arid Inyo Mountains to the east, with Death Valley just beyond, the Lone Pine Time Trials features some of the most striking views of any motorsports event you’re likely to see.

So, for me it was not only a chance to compete at a unique venue, but also to bring back some photos that’s I’m certainly not likely to get anywhere else on the autocross calendar.

I’ll be checking in from the event this weekend, where I’ll be co-driving event chairman Bret Norgaard’s gnarly 300-plus-horsepower 2005 Acura TL in the Street Modified FWD class. The event sold out in under seven hours this year, showing that even after 55 years, autocrossers still want to be outlaws.

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