C360R ALUMNI BUSY ON TRACK

Compass360 alumni Jack Baruth (The Truth About Cars), Billy Johnson (Time Attack), Jose Leroux (Dominican Touring Car) and Kevin York (Denny Swift)  have been busy over the past few months...

Jack Baruth, Master-Jedi of Internet Fame—who had his first outing with Compass360 at the season-ending VIR event in October—was recently tapped as The Truth About Cars star journo compete in GM’s Cadillac CTS-V Challenge. Unsurprisingly, he was top of the charts in the Caddy, after his eye-searing-green Audi S5, which he brought along as a competitor to the Caddy, lost its brakes. Read the whole sorry tale here. Just a few days prior Jack climbed the podium at Laguna Seca at Skip Barber’s inaugural Mazdaspeed Media Challenge, once again representing TTAC. Baruth is one of four drivers who will compete in the upcoming NASA 9-hour enduro at Road Atlanta, alongside C360R Team Principal Karl Thomson.Billy Johnson, who drove with us in 2005, 2006 and 2007 and is currently factory driver for Rousch Racing’s KONI Mustang effort, took a dominant win in the Redline Time Attack season finale at Auto Club Speedway in the absolutely wild FactorX Acura NSX. Billy Big-Time was overall winner (and now track record holder) with a time of 1:36.103 beating the old record of 1:38.3. Check out some fun video of the event here.

Jose Leroux, who led the 2009 KONI Homestead race during his stint in our #75 Honda, recently won the Dominican Touring Car Championship. Piloting his newly-painted Acura TSX (which interestingly was our Grand-Am Championship winning #76 car) with Caterpillar Sponsorship, Jose took a dominant victory, his second in as many years. Details on the series here, and here.

And alphabetically last, but decidedly not least, the master of The Art of Racing in the Rain—Kevin York—who drove with us for the 2008 season, was back at his old stomping grounds in the northwest. WCTC’s Team OYorDunFor finished a very respectable fifth in class and ninth overall in the 34th annual 12 Hours of the Cascades held at Portland International Raceway, where the conditions ran the gamut from dry to torrential downpour and all variations in between. Check out Kevin’s report here.

As we put together our final driver line-up to defend our KONI Championships, it’s nice to see our alumni being successful in other series as well. Congratulations and well done lads!