23rd Annual Richmond Porsche Meet

By Author: John Odden

Posted:

The Shenandoah Region was looked upon favorably on Saturday, June 8th. Looking out of my Virginia Crossings Hotel window at 5:30 AM Saturday morning and seeing rain, I thought, seven months of planning for this event and it looks like it will be a wash out!

I could not have been happier when the second car was parked in the corral parking at the Crossings Golf Club a little after 8 AM. The rain stopped for the day and we had an outstanding event. This year’s event was held on the 18th fairway of the Crossings Golf Club. The golf club manager, Ryan Mohs, gave us the green light to park the cars on the fairway Friday afternoon at 4 PM despite several days of rain. We were good to go for our event on Saturday. All we needed was the weather to cooperate and we would have what was expected to be one of the finest RPM’s in recent years.

I want to thank all of you that traveled to the event Friday afternoon and Saturday morning in inclement conditions for your dedication and commitment to our annual event. Your dedication is what makes the Shenandoah Region the outstanding club it is. Additionally, I want to thank all of the First Settler’s Region members who joined us. We had record attendance for each event of the weekend. The turnout was outstanding for a very concentrated day of Porsche focused fun and activities.

Friday evening we opened the hospitality suite in the Virginia Crossings Hotel at 5 PM for a fantastic evening of socializing, gourmet sandwiches and Papa Johns Pizza.

Saturday, the Porsches entered into the concours judging were positioned on the 18th fairway of the Crossings Golf Club. The corral cars were positioned adjacent to the fairway. Lunch was provided at the golf course pavilion by Smok*N*Pigz BBQ of Powhatan, VA. After lunch we had a driving tour led by Gary Hunter with assistance from Dan Graff through Hanover and Caroline Counties with Dominion Raceway as the destination. Also beginning after lunch was a track cross at Dominion Raceway in Spotsylvania County. This event at Dominion Raceway was unique in that we were able to conduct the timed competitive event on a road course rather than the traditional parking lot. Our track speedmeisters, Rick Ebinger and Erik Boody, did a commendable task of providing a safe and fun 95 mph top speed event with no issues! The driving tour group was able to observe the competition upon their arrival at the race track.

We opened the hospitality suite Saturday before the Awards Banquet Dinner which was held at the Virginia Crossings Hotel. Our guest speaker at this year’s dinner was Erik McIntosh from the Madison Automotive Apprentice Program in Harrisonburg, VA. MAAP is affiliated with James Madison University. The program’s Executive Director is Cole Scrogham. Erik is an upcoming senior at JMU and provided our group with an outstanding overview of what MAAP does and how those in the apprentice program are enhancing their skills and resumes for future opportunities in the automotive engineering field. A focus for the MAAP program is the restoration of Porsche 356’s.

Again this year, we had one of our favorite fellow PCA members from Quebec, Canada drive down for our event. Jacques Leblanc and Nicole won the Euroclassics driving experience gift certificate this year for the best in class concours competition. Jacques and Nicole enjoy our event and love the southern hospitality that Virginia provides. We always look forward to having them join us each year.