Portland International Raceway has a way of making club racing feel bigger than the lap chart.
Maybe it is the setting. PIR sits inside Delta Park in North Portland, tucked into one of the more unique pieces of motorsport geography in the country. Long before it became a racetrack, the land was Vanport, a wartime city built to house Kaiser shipyard workers during World War II. At its peak, Vanport was home to nearly 40,000 people and was the second-largest city in Oregon. In 1948, the city was destroyed by flooding. Years later, the remaining street grid helped form the bones of what would eventually become Portland International Raceway, with the first Rose Cup race held in 1961.
That history matters. PIR is not just another track carved into an empty field. It is a public park, a community gathering place, and one of the great regional motorsports homes in the Pacific Northwest. It is flat, fast in places, technical in others, and just awkward enough to reward drivers who can get the car rotated, settled, and back to power without wasting motion.
For this weekend, Racer on Rails returned to PIR with Cascade Sports Car Club for an ICSCC Conference race weekend, The Dash for Kids XLII.
For anyone newer to Northwest club racing, ICSCC, often simply called “Conference,” is the International Conference of Sports Car Clubs. Founded in 1957, it is an association of independent sports car clubs across Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, and it remains one of the core regional racing structures in the Pacific Northwest. One of the things that makes Conference special is that it is very much club-powered. Drivers are represented through their member clubs, and those clubs participate in the governance of the series. It creates a regional racing culture that feels practical, involved, and very connected to the people actually building, towing, fixing, flagging, and racing the cars.
Cascade Sports Car Club is one of those foundational clubs. Cascade began in 1953 as the 4-Cylinder Sports Car Club of Oregon, changed its name to Cascade in 1956, and has grown into a club with a year-round schedule that includes track days, driver education, road racing, rallies, and volunteer support for major events at PIR.
The Dash for Kids is one of Cascade’s signature weekends. It blends Conference championship road racing with a community charity event, including race car rides, paddock access, family activities, and fundraising for local organizations. The 2026 event marked the 42nd running of The Dash, with race car rides offered during lunch on Saturday and Sunday for donations to the charity.
That meant this weekend had two lanes of purpose for us.
One lane was competition and development.
The other was community.
And, by the end of the weekend, we got a full serving of both.
The Racer on Rails Plan
Originally, we expected to have three drivers on the weekend but one driver had to bow out last minute which left us with two primary competition programs. The silver lining was that open third slot gave us an opportunity to bring out the Racer on Rails #136 Spec E46 race car to give some lunch time charity rides! Can’t complain about that!
For Ron, the goal was not results-first. The goal was development-first.
Ron’s larger arc this season has been about building the kind of adaptable driving skill that transfers across platforms. He has driven Spec E46, the Porsche Cayman GT4, Spec Racer Ford 3, and now PRO3. The long-term objective is not simply to be fast in one car. It is to become the kind of driver who could step into an endurance team environment and be trusted: aware, consistent, confident, mechanically sympathetic, and able to keep the car in a competitive window.
That is a very different target than chasing a single lap time.
PRO3 is an excellent tool for that kind of work.
The class began in the Pacific Northwest in 2002, growing out of a group of BMW E30 racers and friends connected to the Puget Sound BMW CCA scene. It has since become one of the strongest amateur racing classes in ICSCC, the PNW, West Coast and if the group raced nationally, it would be one of the largest racing classes at any weekend, with large grids and deep competition.
It also has a very specific personality. People often casually describe PRO3 as a spec class, and while the rules are restrictive, it is better understood as a tightly controlled, Improved Touring-based formula. The cars are BMW E30 325i chassis with stock M20B25 engines, controlled tires, and rules designed to keep the emphasis closer to the driver ability end of the spectrum rather than spending or exotic development.
More importantly, they are analog. No ABS. No traction control. No stability control. Many cars run without power steering. The braking window is narrow, the tires are easy to over-ask, and the car will absolutely tell on you if your inputs are sloppy. That makes PRO3 one of the best classrooms in Northwest racing.
(C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics
It is also where Gama started racing, and that matters. We have seen it again and again: drivers who can run at the front in PRO3 tend to carry that skill into almost anything else they drive. It teaches commitment, car control, racecraft, mechanical sympathy, and humility. The car is not going to save you. You have to do the work.
For Gama and the 370Z, the weekend had a different purpose. This was a test event for the SCCA Runoffs at Road America later in the year. On paper, PIR and Road America do not look like twins. Road America is longer, faster, and more dramatic, with far more elevation change. But from a setup and systems-testing perspective, PIR still gives us useful information.
(C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics
PIR’s flatness, surface, braking zones, and mechanical-grip demands make it one of the best regional proxies available to us. It would not answer every Road America question, but it could answer some important ones: Do we have real pace? Can the car stay cool? Can we run hard in race conditions? Can we trust the package over a longer stint?
With hot weather forecast in the mid to high 90’s Fahrenheit across the weekend, those questions became even more relevant.
Friday: Promise for the Z, Trouble for the PRO3
Friday test day split into two very different stories.
For the 370Z, the car felt good right away. Track space was limited, and with traffic it was difficult to build a truly representative lap, but the underlying feeling was positive. The plan became straightforward: use Friday to get the car into its window, then put on a new sticker tire set Saturday morning and take two shots at qualifying.
The first shot would come in the morning mini-enduro qualifying session.
The second shot would come in Group 4, where Gama had also entered in ST. Group 4 had faster big-bore traffic, but fewer cars overall. That gave us a better chance of finding the clean air needed to see what the car could really do.
Ron’s Friday was much less tidy.
The PRO3 car developed shifter issues, possibly tied to a deeper transmission issue (Note – We would later confirm the transmission itself was healthy; the shifter issue was the real culprit). Rather than force the car through a compromised test day and risk making things worse, the team made the right call: park it early, diagnose what we had, and prepare to get Ron back on track Saturday.
That kicked off one of those classic club-racing logistics adventures.
Mitchell drove back up to Seattle on Friday evening, grabbed the spare transmission from the shop, and headed back down early Saturday morning. By 7:00 a.m., the team was back under the lift, working to get the transmission into the car and get Ron back in the fight.
No velvet rope. No magic wand. Just people, tools, caffeine, and the quiet soundtrack of “well, this is what racing asks today.”
Saturday Morning: Thrash, Traffic, and One Clean Lap
The team got the PRO3 car back together Saturday morning, but the shifter assembly continued to fight back. It had come loose and was operating strangely enough that even after the transmission swap, there was still work to do.
The good news: the team got it functioning.
The bad news: Ron missed qualifying for both Saturday races.
That meant he would start from the back.
For a driver-development weekend, that is not always a bad thing. It is not convenient. It is not ideal. It definitely makes the day louder. But it gives a driver exactly the kind of work that cannot be simulated cleanly: traffic, starts, passes, imperfect rhythm, and the need to adapt to the car you have rather than the car you wish you had.
Meanwhile, Gama rolled into Saturday morning qualifying on new tires hoping to get a clean representative lap in the 370Z.
That part did not go to plan.
By the time we got to pre-grid, there were already more than 25 cars lined up. The decision was to go to the back and create space, but with 50-plus cars on track, including a large Spec Miata field, there simply was not enough clear racetrack to put the lap together. Then the session ended early due to an incident.
So we waited for Group 4.
This time, the track-space plan finally worked. Fewer cars. Faster traffic. A better rhythm. And then, finally:
1:23.592.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZnKfwEgRnP
That lap put Gama P9 overall in Group 4 qualifying and P1 in ST. More importantly, it gave us the first clean signal that the 370Z had real pace in the package.
Was it perfect? No.
There was still time left on the table. Based on feel, predictive timing, and the work Gama and Tyler had done around the car’s potential, the estimate was that a 1:23.2 was likely available in that session. With a cleaner sticker-tire run and a true max-effort qualifying format, the team believes a 1:23.0, and possibly even a 1:22.8, was realistic, even in with temperatures already at 80F by 9am.
But for the goal of the weekend, the message was clear: the car had the nationally competitive pace we expected.
Now we needed to find out if it could survive the heat.
Ron Starts at the Back and Gets to Work
Ron’s Saturday was the kind of day that can turn into a throwaway if the driver lets it.
He did not.
After missing qualifying, he started from the back in Group 2 and worked his way forward to P10 in a 22-car PRO3 field, with a best lap of 1:31.721.
Then he backed it up in Group 5, finishing P5 in CT4 with a best lap of 1:31.210.
That was a big deal.
Not because P10 or P5 are magic numbers by themselves, but because of how he got there. Ron had to adapt after a messy mechanical start to the weekend. He had to race from the back. He had to get close to other cars, work through battles, and keep the car moving forward.
This is exactly the kind of growth we wanted from PRO3.
In clean air, drivers can work on lap time. In traffic, they have to work on craft. Portland forced Ron into the craft side of the ledger, and by the end of Saturday he was not just circulating. He was racing people. He was putting the car in places that mattered. He was becoming more comfortable with the car moving around underneath him.
That is the good stuff.
Not shiny, not always obvious from the outside, but very real.
The 370Z Race: Pace Confirmed, Cooling Not Yet Solved
Saturday afternoon, the 370Z lined up for the Group 4 race.
The goal was not necessarily to chase the race result. The goal was to run the car hard in heat and see what we had from a reliability and cooling standpoint.
The afternoon temperatures were already brutal, climbing from around 90 degrees toward the mid-90s as the race went on. That was useful. We are unlikely to see those exact conditions at Road America in early October, but that was the point. If the car could stay cool at full tilt in this environment, we would have a lot more confidence heading into the Runoffs.
Unfortunately, the race showed us that there is still work to do.
Early on, the car was running normally in clean air. Then, after a full course yellow around six or seven laps in, water temperature warnings started to appear. The car was not done, but it was no longer free to race at full attack. Gama had to manage it with lift-and-coast into braking zones, short-shifting around 7,000 rpm, and rolling back into throttle more gently than normal.
That kept the car alive and allowed us to finish, winning ST with a best race lap of 1:24.826.
But the result was not the lesson.
The lesson was that if we had needed to battle hard, defend, attack, or run nose-to-tail for position, we would have been compromised. The pace is there. The car is closer. But the cooling system still needs more margin before Road America.
That was valuable information.
We had also entered the one-hour mini enduro, which would have been the closest proxy for the 45-minute Runoffs race distance. But with the car already showing heat-management limits, and with the afternoon only getting hotter, there was no reason to keep poking the dragon with a torque wrench.
We had learned what we needed to learn.
The team made the call to park the car for the rest of the weekend. The official results show the 370Z as a DNS for the mini enduro, which was exactly the right decision.
Sometimes the smartest lap is the one you do not run.
Sunday Morning: Ron Finds Another Gear
Sunday morning was Ron’s chance to reset.
The car was back. The conditions were better than they would be later in the day. The goal was to make the most of the cooler track before the heat came in.
Ron got after it.
In Group 2 qualifying, he dropped into the 1:30s with a 1:30.946, good for P11 in PRO3.
Then, in Group 5 qualifying, he put together a 1:30.554 and qualified P1 in CT4.
Pole position. 💪🏾
The first pole position of Ron’s driving career. Let’s go!!!
That moment deserves to breathe a little.
Ron’s weekend started with the car parked early, a transmission run to Seattle, a Saturday morning thrash, missed qualifying, and back-of-grid starts. By Sunday morning, he had settled himself, kept building, and put the car at the top of the CT4 sheet.
That is not just pace. That is resilience.
And in a PRO3-based car, it means something. These cars do not give you lap time for free. You have to ask the right questions with your hands, feet, eyes, and timing, then listen carefully when the car answers back.
Ron was getting more comfortable throwing the car around. More comfortable letting it move. More comfortable staying in the fight when the environment got messy.
That is the development arc.
Sunday Afternoon: Racing in the Skillet
By Sunday afternoon, PIR was hot.
Very hot.
Air temperatures were deep into the 90s, with track temperatures well above 130 degrees. No one was expecting record pace in those conditions. This was about execution, racecraft, and keeping the car underneath you while everyone else was dealing with the same greasy, overheated racetrack.
In the Group 2 PRO3 race, Ron had challengers all around him. That is what happens when you start to make your presence known. People race you differently. They expect you to be there. They fight harder.
Ron started in position, battled early, and kept working through the race. He got past the group he had been racing with the day before and finished P8 in PRO3, only a couple of seconds behind the next cluster of cars up the road. His best lap was a 1:31.354 in the heat.
P8 in PRO3 is nothing to sneeze at.
That mid-pack and front-mid-pack zone in PRO3 is filled with serious drivers. In a class that deep, moving from “learning the car” into “competing with the pack” is a meaningful step.
Then came the Group 5 CT4 race.
Starting from pole, Ron got mugged at the start and had to fight for the rest of the race with Payden Baxter and Matthew King. It turned into exactly the kind of race he needs more of: pressure, passing, defending, imperfect lines, and decisions that had to be made quickly.
He finished P3, on the podium, with a best lap of 1:31.164. That was barely off his Saturday CT4 race pace and impressively close to his cooler-session qualifying benchmark, considering the heat.
Mega.
A first pole. A podium. A P8 in PRO3. A weekend that began with mechanical drama and ended with real signs of competitive belonging.
Awesome work, Ron.
More Than Lap Time
The biggest thing from Ron’s weekend is that the progress was not just numerical.
Yes, the lap times improved. Yes, the results got better. Yes, he put the car on pole in CT4 and ended the weekend with a podium.
But the more important part is that he had to keep the fundamentals alive when the racing got loud around him.
That is one of the hardest transitions for any developing driver. It is one thing to drive well in clean air when the plan is simple. It is another thing to drive well when someone gets alongside, a start gets messy, the car moves underneath you, or a pass does not happen in one corner.
Portland gave Ron a full buffet of those moments.
The next step is making that craft more deliberate and more repeatable. Not just being fast, but being able to access the driving under pressure. Not just getting close to cars, but knowing what to do with that closeness. Not just reacting to a battle, but shaping it.
That is exactly why we wanted him in PRO3.
Dash for Kids: The Other Reason We Were There
While the racing side of the weekend gave us plenty to work through, The Dash for Kids gave the weekend a bigger frame.
During lunch on Saturday and Sunday, racers and teams offered ride-alongs in race cars and exotic cars, with donations going toward the weekend’s charity. Cascade’s format makes the paddock feel open and welcoming, with spectators able to see the cars, talk with drivers and crew, and get a closer look at the machinery that usually flashes by from the other side of the fence.
For Racer on Rails, that meant bringing down the Silver Bullet Spec E46, installing the extra seat, and joining the ride program.
After making the decision to park the 370Z, that actually became a perfect pivot. The competitive work was done. The car had told us what we needed to know. So instead of forcing more laps into worsening heat, we cooled down, reset, and had fun giving people rides around PIR.
That is a good race weekend.
Not because every plan worked perfectly. It did not.
Because the weekend gave us the right answers.
The 370Z showed pace, then showed us the next engineering problem. Ron got hit with mechanical adversity, then turned the weekend into one of his strongest development steps of the year. The team handled a transmission swap, shifter issues, hot conditions, traffic, race starts, and charity rides.
That is club racing in full color.
Final Takeaways
For Gama and the 370Z, Portland confirmed that the car has real speed. The 1:23.592 in Group 4 qualifying was the cleanest read of the weekend, and the team believes there is more available with a true max-effort qualifying format and cleaner track space. But the race also confirmed that cooling remains a priority before Road America. The car can run. The car has pace. Now it needs more thermal margin.
For Ron, Portland was a major step.
He missed Saturday qualifying, started from the back, raced forward, kept improving, put the car on pole for the first time in his driving career, finished P8 in a very competitive PRO3 field, and ended the weekend with a CT4 podium.
More importantly, he became a little more of the driver he is working to become.
Adaptable. Confident. Aware. Comfortable in the fight.
That is what we came for.
And with The Dash for Kids wrapping the weekend in community, ride-alongs, family energy, and a reminder that racing can be both serious and generous, Portland gave us exactly the kind of weekend that sticks around after the trailer doors close.
Goals. Smiles. Memories.
That one checks all three.
