Pocono Track Sprint 2025 was held October 4-5, 2025 at Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, PA. This SCCA sanctioned event was hosted by the Giants Despair Hillclimb Association, and was the eighth and final event in the 2025 PHA Championship Series.

PHA has not run at Pocono for many years, and it was great to finally return.  For this event, we ran the East Course Option 4 configuration as a Track Sprint, and the course length was one mile.  

We had 77 entries, which was a pretty decent turnout! Anticipation was high Friday night, with a number of drivers taking advantage of the garage space offered by the track.

The weather could not have been better for the beginning of October, with highs in the 70’s both days and sunny.    Everyone (and their cars) behaved themselves aside from a few mechanical issues, and we managed to offer 28 runs.  I believe that may be a new record for number of runs offered, but don’t quote me on that!

Ron Moreck took FTD in the car he borrowed from Bill Feist — a Stohr F100 —  running a 42.804.

Although PHA has held events at Pocono previously, those events were held so long ago that the course configurations are probably not the same.  So we chose to start tracking class records for this course configuration from this event on, which means that every class winner holds the new class record.   So instead of talking about class records, I’ll have to come up with something else…

How about the top 3?  Dan Dobalo made an impressive return after his incident at Giants, coming in second overall.  The car even looks good! 

Dan ran a 45.057 in his 2009 Chevrolet Corvette that he runs in Sport Unlimited (SU).  His time is even more impressive when you consider he was faster than Dan Foley by over half a second, who runs an AWD 2008 Mitsubishi Evo in SU.

Third overall was Jon Post, running a 45.305 in his 2022 Speedcar Wonder that he runs in Special 1 (S1)

Speaking of Special 1, Edward Smith was only narrowly behind Jon Post by .445 seconds, and was fifth overall.   Edward ran a 45.750 in his 2014 Suzuki Cross Kart.  I don’t have any pictures of Edward Smith from Pocono, so am reusing this one from Fall Weatherly, where he took FTD.

In between the Cross Karts was Dan Foley, who came in forth overall.  Dan ran a 45.617 in his 2008 Mitsubishi Evo that he runs in Sport Unlimited (SU).  Running with the Cross Karts is no easy task, so my hat is off to Dan.

For the rest of the top 10, Michael Robinson came in 6th with a 45.875, Michael Frohman in 7th with a 46.158, Raymond Kochin in 8th with a 46.233, Joshua Bittle in 9th with a 46.712 and Craig Carpenter in 10th with a 47.390.    I can’t find pictures of everyone, but here is what I have

This event was able to offer special trophies thanks to Ron Moreck.   In addition to first in class, there was a trophy for the first 3 places overall.

Ron Moreck took FTD as mentioned earlier, and claimed his well deserved trophy.

From a personal standpoint, I really enjoyed this event,  having never run at Pocono before. 

First, I finally caught Don McLaughlin on my very last run.   I have been chasing him all season.   But even if  I hadn’t managed to catch Don, the event was a lot of fun

I arrived late on Friday, but wasn’t even sure where the course was.  I finally found The Campfire after walking the long way around from the garages, and then found the short cut back to the garage area.  I definitely got my steps in that night!

We received permission from the event organizers for a course walk Fri night, and a bunch of us set off around 10 PM.  It was very dark (despite the picture showing otherwise), but all the same, I found it to be extremely helpful.  Special thanks to Geoff Craig, whose words of wisdom really helped me navigate the course in ways I wouldn’t have even tried on my first event.

The Saturday night campfire at this event was one of the funnest I can remember.   I don’t think I’ve laughed that long or hard in a while!

There were a ton of shenanigans, but one of the funniest was when the campfire wasn’t catching and the leaf blower helped things out!

If you want to see some more event photos, check out the following  links:

Daily Driving / Hashira DD:  https://hashirarpmframes.online

Don McLaughlin https://www.flickr.com/photos/mcdallion/albums/72177720329521685