Last weekend was the 7th Annual UMI Performance Autocross and Cruise In and holy cow, what a show! Hosted at the newly acquired UMI Motorsports Park, the racing this year was insane. Thursday night we got into town and headed directly to the track. Here we were greeted by all the competitors and able to walk around the track to check it out. What a cool facility where they transformed it from a ⅝-mile into a road course/autocross complex. You can tell a ton of work had gone into this place to bring it back from the dead.

Friday morning we got to see that track layout put to use and it was awesome! The track had slow, technical spots and fast spots. All day long the cars were lined up taking lap after lap. One corner went around a snack bar, so we lovingly named it “Corndog Corner.” There was even a blind corner built into the track that took a certain level of trust. You had to basically come up to it moving at a good clip and just turn the car – you couldn’t see the exit till mid apex. That was thrilling to experience and thrilling to watch people navigate.The coolest part was watching the cars come out of the infield at the beginning of turn three and fly around turns three and four all the way across the finish line. You really got to hear the engines run! After that, they would line back up for another lap.

Another cool aspect of the show was the fundraising. The track had a no-profanity policy. But let’s be real, these are car guys and they cuss! So we started a swear bucket as a swear jar would be too small. By the end of Saturday we had raised over $2,500 which was all donated to ALS Awareness. On top of that, there was a bake sale benefitting the Emily Whitehead Foundation which raised over $2,500 as well!

Once racing ended on Friday, we all loaded up to cruise a back road to UMI Performance for an open house and BBQ. We were able to walk around the factory checking out all the tools and equipment they use to manufacture parts here in the USA! Pretty cool to see in person. Saturday started back up with more racing. With the track memorized and analyzed overnight the racers were eager to get another chance at it. They were able to work on lowering their lap times until 2PM when the racing stopped and a winner was awarded.

First place winners were Justin Nall(Vintage Class), Chuck Trimble(Mid-Muscle Class), Brad Smith(Late Model Class) and Joe Gregory(Two-Seater Sports Car). The first three winners here were all running UMI Performance suspension – pretty cool for the UMI crew.

After that the show cars started to cruise in and line the track. We enjoyed walking around seeing all the show cars and checking out what Pennsylvania had to offer. We were impressed and can’t wait to be back next year! This place is super cool and the UMI staff and family were fun to hang out with.