The buzz leading up to the weekend was the weather — rain was forecast for Saturday.  This is news because here in sunny California, we pretty much never see rain during the racing season.  And that means that most of us don’t bother buying and carrying around rain tires that we’ll never use.  And that means that when it rains, we feel like we’re basically going to have a bad weekend.

But the forecast for Sunday was fine, and 2 of the 3 races were going to be on Sunday, so at least there’s that!

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The San Francisco Region has published the entry list for the upcoming race weekend.

For me, looks largely like “same stuff, different day.”  I’m looking forward to another knock-down-drag-out with Doug, and hopefully with James, who kicked butt at the last Laguna race (which I missed).

269 total entries thus far.  That’s not very many for a double weekend at Laguna Seca, although most other racing groups would be thrilled to get that kind of turnout.  But this is the weekend before the Runoffs, which could be part of the reason.  I think the last double at Laguna had over 350 entries.

UPDATE 10/2: The revised entry list has 293 entries.  Rain is forecast for Saturday.  Too bad I don’t have rain tires.

By now, I think a lot of you have already watched the video from the 2nd of the two Labor Day weekend races.  That one was quite the spectacle, a truly constant battle between me and Doug Makishima for the overall win.

I have also just added the video from the first race from that weekend.  It was a great start with a couple of passes on the first lap, but after that it settled out.  There were two full-course caution periods, so not much traffic to contend with (I think I only passed two lapped cars), but there was a nice moment with a big oil slick in T4.

Enjoy the videos!

EDIT: Just because I figured out how to do it, here’s the excellent Race 2 video, embedded right here on this page. To see it full size, click the link above. You’ll need Microsoft’s cool Silverlight browser plugin to see it.

Wow, what a weekend! Fantastic weather here in the bay area, a nice double race at my favorite track, and some intense competition … awesome, just the way I like it!

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The entry list for the Labor Day weekend Double Regional at Infineon has been posted, and it’s gonna be a huge turnout. It’ll probably get even bigger, but at this point there are 345 entries. Group 7, the Spec Miata group, has an enormous 76 entries (and it’s now closed to new entries.) 2nd biggest group is my group, group 5, with 61 entries, roughly half of which are actually Spec Miatas with a 2nd entry in ITA.

The paddock is gonna be nuts, but I’m really looking forward to the race weekend!

EDIT: The entry list has been updated.  Up to 366 total entries.  I went up to the track early this morning to secure a paddock location.  If you want to come to visit, drive along the back side of the main grandstands, then turn left when you get to the end, and I’m paddocked with Rod McLane on the right hand side of that row … near where we usually are.

This weekend was probably my only Thunderhill race of the season. I wanted to make it good!

I’ll bottom line it for you: weather was hot & smoky, earned my first ever overall pole, led the race flag-to-flag, made a couple of new friends in the paddock, and was still home by 1:30pm on Sunday. But keep reading for the details!

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I have finished editing my in-car video from the race this past weekend. This one makes the second great group 5 race in a row! I think both are pretty fun to watch. Here’s the link to round 1 if you want to go back and see that one too.

Enjoy!

Another fantastic race in SCCA SFR Group 5. This switch to group 5 was actually a very good thing for me. The competition is tighter (even if it’s with cars in other classes) and I feel like it’s raising my game by quite a bit. Group 5 is about the same size as group 1 (50+ cars this weekend), but the difference is that there are more cars at a very similar performance level, and we’re at the front of the group instead of mid-pack.

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For many years, the SCCA National Club Racing program has had an award known as “The Triple Crown”. Basically, if you win your divisional points series, and win your class at the annual race at Road America known as “The June Sprints”, and win your class at the National Championship race (“The Runoffs”), then you win the Triple Crown. It’s obviously quite difficult to win one, considerably harder than even winning a National Championship.

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I am having trouble with the first group 1 race video, but the group 5 race video and the 2nd group 1 race video have been posted to the gallery and are also linked from the home page.  I’d love to hear your comments.  Enjoy!