O’Fast 2025 | The Autocross Was a Blast

A long-time tradition at Oktoberfest continued at Wisconsin’s O’Fast 2025: the autocross. This is basically a car-handling challenge in which a complex course of tricky curves, slaloms, heavy braking and more test both driver and car. The threshold of entry is also satisfyingly low. You don’t need a race-prepared car to participate—just a helmet. And while it’s not hard on most components, it can certainly consume tires.

Photo: Jon vanWoerden

There were 36 entrants in the O’Fast autocross, most driving Munich products but also a couple of Stuttgart escapees—along with a big honkin’ Mustang. Sadly for me, there was not a single BMW 2002. If I didn’t leave mine at home, I would’ve been out there.

The course took advantage of Road America’s motorcycle/go-kart track. Since the pavement width catered to motorcycles or karts, this tight road course eliminated the need for the occasionally overwhelming traditional autocross venue: an empty expanse of asphalt peppered with seemingly random cones. That changed the normal autocross learning curve and worked to level the playing field, since there wasn’t a 400 cone course to learn in a football stadium parking lot. That let everyone get up to speed quickly and safely. As a result, there was not a single off-course incident during more than 350 autocross runs.

Steve Stephanian of the Los Angeles Chapter chaired the event. Stephanian and his crew laid out the course, while the Fox River Sports Car Club provided all the autocross essentials: cones, timing equipment, and volunteers. The finished design featured one sharp curve after another, with the only straight less than 200 yards long, ending at the finish line. This discouraged straightaway heroics to make up for lost time in the twisties.

Let’s take a run through all those curves. A rolling start—to preserve tire tread—led directly to an immediate sharp left, followed by a tight S curve, and then yet another S, this one shaped more like a horseshoe. A very short straight—measured in feet—ended with an unequal-length switchback and a second horseshoe. Midway through that second horseshoe, with the suspension partially unloaded, drivers reached the crest of the course’s ascending portion, and that unloaded suspension was now lightened even further in the transition to the downhill second half of the course.

Next up was a left-to-right two-cone slalom; a cunningly placed cone might have lured a driver into thinking it was the horseshoe’s apex, but it wasn’t. After a panicked braking on the first (or even second) run to make it through those slalom gates without collecting cones (and penalties), the learning curve kicked in for most drivers, and they chose an earlier apex. Unfortunately—but of course deliberately designed—that right-hand exit was exactly the wrong way to approach the final wiggle: a sharp right-then-left. Now, at last, came a straight—with gravity providing more speed than really necessary, while a nice wide—but slightly offset gate—tempted the hot-shoes.

Drivers concentrating on the road twenty feet in front of the hood were then oblivious to the sharp right-hand finish gate; much rubber was sacrificed near this gate in a (usually) successful effort to avoid those ever-lurking cones.

All of this maneuvering took less than a minute. A good time was in the mid-50-second range.

Eric Kersten of the Badger Bimmers chapter on top of the Class B podium, also holding the FTD trophy

With efficient staging and running, each of the 36 drivers had eleven opportunities to make that perfect run. After the (rubber) dust had settled, Eric Kersten not only won his Class B in his 2024 M2, he had the fastest time of day (FTD) with a best run of 51.638 seconds, leading second-place finisher Rafael Garces—also in Class B—in a year-newer M2 by less than a second.

Kersten in his frozen blue M2 Photo: Richard Daugherty

Perennial hot-shoe Michael Washington led Class A, and was third overall driving his ’95 M3. Class A’s second-place finisher, Scott Smid, also drove a ’95 M3. Dimitar Stavrakov had the best time in Class C in his 2003 M3, followed by Matthew Scott, driving the same year and model BMW. The fastest driver in Class D was Chris Riester, who drove his 2003 330i Sport, followed by another perennial O’fest autocrosser, Mel Dillon, in his 2014 235i.

A 2014 328i was Dimitre Dimitrov’s weapon of choice, taking first in Class E, while Victor Garces was less than two seconds back in his 2024 2 Series Gran Coupé. Richard Daugherty wheeled his ’23 X3—not generally thought of as an autocross vehicle—around the course quickly enough to win Class F ahead of Richard Daugherty’s xDrive 330i.

Finally, in Class X—for non-BMW rides—Brian Tippens drove his Hyundai Ioniq to a class win, beating the two Porsches and the Mustang, much to the surprise of everyone except perhaps the owner. Even more surprising, he was fourth overall (!) for the day, just 2.1 seconds off the winning FTD. Apparently, all that electric-motor torque—and Tippens’s driving skill, of course—overcame the weight from the Hyundai’s batteries.

As always, the autocross did what it does best and gave entrants of all skill levels the opportunity to find the limits of their car in a safe, controlled setting. The only problem is that once you start autocrossing, it can be become addictive. Not a problem, of course, just make sure to increase that tire budget.

Top Photo: Jon vanWoerden