As I posted last week, the turnout for the race this weekend was a little bit light, especially for Laguna Seca (many people’s favorite track).  The paddock had plenty of space, which certainly isn’t common.  I count only 193 starters shown in the results.

For me, well, I was the only car in ITR.  How’s that Prelude coming Mike?  I also have heard that the club’s new classification of the 5.0L Mustang GTs and the 305ci Camaros & Firebirds into ITR is causing at least one local competitor to do a used car search.  So I’m hoping for some more entries soon.  Rod even put a GDGR sticker on his Spec Miata and was overheard actively discussing ITR prospects and prices.  Here’s hoping.

But, just like in most recent races, Doug Makishima is very fast in his ITS E30 BMW, and even though we’re not in the same class, we’re really evenly matched.  We also both seem to turn up the flame just a little bit when we’re near each other on the track.  In Saturday’s practice session, our fastest laps were both 2+ seconds off of our normal pace, but only 0.144 seconds apart.  The track just seemed slick.  Laguna Seca for being finicky about weather, so that was probably part of it.  It was fairly chilly (well, chilly for northern California) and windy.

Sunday was qualifying and race day for us, and just like in practice, we were close.  We both managed to get to the front of pre-grid for the qualifying session and so were able to set up traffic-free laps early, and our qualifying times were only 0.070 seconds apart … unfortunately for me, it was Doug in front, me in 2nd.  And the lap times were much faster than Saturday, although I was still a few tenths slower than my own track record.  I blame the weather and the old tires.  Or maybe it was the rust since I haven’t raced since October.  Or maybe I’m just making excuses.  In any case, it was Doug, then me, and then the next car was 3+ seconds slower than we were.

For the race, I put some slightly fresher (but still used) tires on the back, hoping to settle the car down a little bit and improve the driveability.  Unfortunately I discovered on the grid that I’d left my video camera running since qualifying, and the battery was dead … no video for the race.  Bummer!

In actuality, I’m not sure that being 2nd is really all that bad, at least in this situation.  With the big gap back to the car behind me, I didn’t have to watch my mirrors at all, so I could concentrate on just hunting Doug down.  However, for the first four laps, Doug widened the gap just slightly, until I was about 1 second behind.  Then, there was a pretty big wreck in T9 somewhere behind us.  I don’t know what really happened, but from looking at the results, I’m going to guess that two ITA Miatas got together, one spun, and then an ITC 510 came along and rammed the stopped Miata HARD in the rear end, pretty much destroying both cars, and leaving the remaining Miata intact but in the gravel trap.

In any case, it led to 3-1/2 laps behind the pace car, which closed up the 1 second gap.  However, it also meant that we were less likely to encounter traffic later in the race, and with Doug being ever-so-slightly faster than me, it was going to take either a mistake by Doug or some well-placed traffic for me to really make this race work.

After the workers cleaned everything up (and they did a fantastic job, there was a LOT of debris!), we went back to green.  Doug got quite a good jump on me on the restart (he left a gap behind the pace car going down the hill, and then started going for it before T10 … caught me sleeping … and the green was flying from the moment we turned the corner onto the front straight), so the gap on that restart was as big as it had been for the entire starting segment of the race.  But then I got my break … Doug went a little hot into T6 and got the outside tires just barely into the dirt.  He had to give it just a little lift, and that let me close the gap.  By the braking zone for the corkscrew, I was touching his bumper!  I made sure my execution going down the hill was perfect and I managed to stay touching his bumper down the front straight.  Going into the Andretti hairpin (T2), Doug moved to the inside trying to protect, but … not far enough!  I saw a car width plus 6 inches there, and I took it!  The pass stuck and off we went.  I drove scared!  The next time down the front straight, Doug stuck right with me, I really protected the inside, and Doug attempted the outside pass.  I heard and saw him push deep and lock the brakes, and the attempt failed.  Next time through T5, apparently I surprised him with my braking point (really Doug, I thought I did what I always do) leaving him a little slow going up the hill, leaving a 2 second gap or so.  With only 3 laps left, barring a major mistake on my part, it looked like I’d had it won!

Of course, the last time I thought I had it won (Labor Day ’08 at Infineon), I managed to totally blow the last turn on the last lap, and Doug won the drag race to the finish line.  This time, I was a little more careful and finished 1.8 seconds in front at the finish line.  Thanks Doug, it was another great, close, and contact free race.  I hope we can do it like this every race weekend!

Next race is a double at Thunderhill over the Memorial Day weekend.  I’m looking forward to it, this was a fun start to the season!  Mike, please tell me you’ll be there with the new car!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 9:27 pm and is filed under Race Reports, SCCA.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.