Chicago has a bit of a reputation with weather.   Bitter cold winters, hot humid summers, and this wind thing. 

Well, its proving to be a pretty good thing for everyone at the Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, a suburb about 30 miles southwest of the city.  All week long, thunderstorms with significant rain have decended upon the area.   Last night, flood watches accompanied the tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings.

Well, thankfully, its all cleared out and moved on, and we can get down to the business of Time Attack!  Forecasters are now saying that today and tomorrow will have clear, sunny skys with a good bit of humidity (its not too bad right now, but it is a bit sticky from all the rain) with high temperatures in the mid-80s.  The track surface is still drying out a bit after the first group of drivers in Saturday morning practice has made their way through. 

A moderate size group of racers has setup camp in the paddock here at the at Autobahn including a good contingent of returning racers. 

Debuting at this event, on their “home track” is the AMS TA-X Evo X.  The team was out here yesterday, getting a little shakedown time on the North Course along with Sponsoree Ryan Gates and his Evo X. Ross Miller and the crew at Ptuning have resurrected their Scion tC and made the 13 hour drive from DC to be here.  

But the Long Haul award so far is going to Quirt Crawford and the guys from Crawford Performance who drove from Oceanside, CA out to the track (and were somewhat lost when arriving here last night at about 10pm and ended up at the Chicagoland Speedway/Route 66 Raceway complex just up the road).   Other faces in the crowd include Chris Rado and the World Racing team, James Elterman and his Takata STi, Sharif Abdelbaset and his Forged Performance R35.