Member Spot: Mike Chilcote

When not working you would normally find Mike spending quality time with his wife or actively engaged in his favorite hobbies, mountain biking and homebrewing. Whilst all those things are still very important to Mike, he has found a new hobby to add to his varied list of interests. Mike and his dad came across our regions RallyCross School held in April of last year. They both attended that event in their daily drivers and were hooked immediately. Mike decided fairly quick that he wanted to become more involved with the sport and our region. To do so he started volunteering at registration. It didn’t take long at all for him to work his way up to RallyCross Registration Chief.

Realizing RallyCross is not the easiest thing on your daily driver, Mike and his dad spent the off season combing Craigslist for used cars that were suitable for the sport. It didn’t take to long for them to spy a champagne colored 2000 Mazda Protégé. The best part of the find was the minimal $300 cost to get a dedicated rally car. Although the car is perfectly suited for their needs the champagne color was just not very inspirational. To help the new rally car get into the spirit of running and winning they decided it needed to be painted. Indigo blue with a black roof was the chosen colors.

Normally you would find Mike’s wife, Faye, behind the camera documenting our rally events in photos. Instead Mike decided to enlist her talents in making the Protégé’s exterior match the feisty moxie of her insides. What, you ask, would be best to paint a RallyCross car? You guessed it, Rattle Cans! So, Mike and Faye took a full Saturday spraying away until the exterior of the newly minted rally car inspired the racing spirit. Once the newly painted car looked the part it was time to make sure the guts were up to being competitive in its class. The rest of the off season was spent upgrading the suspension, adding a strut bar, installing a cat back and of course putting on a set of rally tires.

This year Mike ran our RX events and the 2017 DirtFish SCCA RX East National Challenge at the Rally Farm in Catlett VA. Where Mike took 7th place in PF. We are looking forward to seeing what Mike and the Protégé have in store for us at the remaining events and in the years to come.