Corvette Club of Delaware Valley wins Club Challenge Cup by a landslide
2003 was the first year of our Corvette Challenge Club Challenge Cup. The Club Challenge cup was designed to allow Corvette drivers in the Corvette challenge to participate in some club competition. The series within a series simply added the total points earned for drivers who identified themselves as members of a Corvette Club. We had six Corvette Clubs participating. Corvette Club of Delaware Valley (CCDV) was the leader in participation with 14 drivers and the winner of the Cup with a whopping 193 points. The County Corvette Association (CCA1) was the second place club with five drivers and 60 points. First Capital Corvette Club (FCCC) came in third with only one driver and 45 points. Corvette Club of America (CCA2) was fourth with three drivers. Fifth place was captured by Northeastern Pennsylvania Corvette
Club (NPCC) with one driver and 12 points. The final spot was held by Long Island Corvettes Owners Association (LICOA) with one driver and an attendance challenged three points.
Club
Driver Count
Total Points
CCDV
14
193
CCA1
5
60
FCCC
1
45
CCA2
3
20
NPCC
1
12
LICOA
1
3
For only its first year, the program was a fair success with 25 of the total 96 points drivers being Club Challenge Cup entrants and scoring 333 points averaging 13.32 points per driver. The number was largely helped by the 2003 points champion, Joe Blass, being a club participant and bringing in his club in third place all by himself. The biggest success pushing effort for this series came for the CCDV, who also is an associate sponsor of the series, with 14 drivers participating. Of the fourteen, they were led by third place finisher Edgar Perez and tenth place finisher Ellis Gray. Big guns were nice but of the 14 drivers, seven were rookies to the Corvette Challenge led by Joe Signore who finished second in the Rookie of the Year chase missing the title by one point. Rounding out the CCDV team in order of finish were Tony Buonassisi, Mike Wicks, Al Betz, Vince Pileggi, Carl Neff, John Burbich, Lee Sofer, Mike Campbell, Joel Fellmen, Don Laskowksi and club president, Richy Josephs.
CCDV members Tony Buonassisi, Ellis Gray and Edgar Perez pictued in 2002 when Ellis won Event 8
Second place club, CCA1, was led by Keith Conner with 18 points, beating out dad and Club Challenge Cup coordinator, Al Conner, by 6 points. This club with five racers also rookie heavy with three rookies led by Butch Rokosz with 15 points. The club team was rounded out with first year racers Dave Sanders and James Kilpatrick. Our CCA2 club is our distance traveling club from the DC area. These three were no rookies. This club races together in many events and made fewer trips than expected to Raceway Park and was bunched together in points with Steve Row and Ernie King tied for first in their club with seven points and Bill Wilson close behind with six. The remaining two clubs were one racer clubs so club championships went to Rich Shuleski in the NPCC club and Lenny Marotta in the LICOA club. Marotta is also one of our associate sponsors (Marotta Racing)
Club participation did not mean just additional racers to the series as these club members usually came loaded with supporters to support their club. Most notably, CCDV always brought a few Corvette owners to cheer the team including Tony's leading ladies, Rose and Mom. Spouses and children came out to support the drivers as well as we all know Jaymie Shuleski (Rich's wife), Blass' wife Jeanne who only missed one race and Ellis Gray and Edgar Perez usually had one of their future racers there, video taping or handing out flyers to the drivers. Drivers are always welcome to bring along all the support they like.
The awarding of the cup will happen at our 2nd Annual Awards Banquet on January 10, 2003 at Freehold Gardens in Freehold, NJ. Tickets for the banquet are $35 each and include a full meal as well a fun filled awards presentation complete with door prize giveaways, auctions, a raffle for a mini-bike and of course, a 50/50 to benefit Toys for Teens & Tots. Come on out and congratulate the first ever Corvette Challenge Club Challenge Cup winning team. Tickets to the banquet can be purchased from John Mackey through the mail. To email John for ticket info click here
2003 was the first year of our Corvette Challenge Club Challenge Cup. The Club Challenge cup was designed to allow Corvette drivers in the Corvette challenge to participate in some club competition. The series within a series simply added the total points earned for drivers who identified themselves as members of a Corvette Club. We had six Corvette Clubs participating. )
