But, of course, I didn’t really know how to do it with Windows Movie Maker, which is what I use for all of my videos. Mostly, I use WMM because it’s free, it’s already on my work laptop (which is plenty powerful enough to do this stuff, unlike my home desktop, which is getting so long in the tooth that we never even turn it on anymore), and it’s brain-dead simple to use.

Of course, brain-dead simple means that you can’t do much fancy stuff with it, like picture-in-picture, side-by-side, etc. Or so I thought.

Last night during my nightly web-surfing, I read something somewhere that said that it was possible to do picture-in-picture in WMM with a plugin. A plugin? I didn’t even know there were plugins for WMM. So, off to Google I went, and sure ’nuff, there’s an almost-free plugin called PIP Plus that claimed to be able to do this. Free for 15 days, and only $8 after that. Cheap enough for me.

It’s very short on documentation but comes with some samples. WMM supports two types of special effects: “effects”, which apply for the duration of a video clip, and “transitions”, which affect the way the movie switches from one clip to another. The way to do PIP in WMM is to transition from one clip to another for the entire duration of the clips, and during the transition, PIP2 lets you control how each of the clips display (position, size, etc.)

You drive it by hand-editing XML. Fun. You have to restart WMM every time you make a change to the XML file, then delete the old transition, and apply the new one. Then you have to line up the two clips so that they are aligned. Pain in the ass, but that’s what I get for being cheap. Adobe Premier probably makes this all trivial.

Complicating matters, my video is 16:9, and Doug’s is 4:3. So I went through lots of trial and error. But after several iterations, I think I got it. It’s not perfect. There’s some extra video at the beginning and the end. It’s only the first 4 laps of the race because that’s all Doug’s camera managed to get, for some reason. I left both audio tracks playing simultaneously (although I know how to do other things), but I didn’t know what the right thing to do was.

The video is embedded here below, or full-sized in the gallery.

If you prefer, the full-size video is here.

It’ll take a little while to get the enduro videos going — we used Rod’s camera. I’m told that perhaps it wasn’t aimed all that well (we had it out the window, facing forward, to get a more interesting view … but it didn’t work as well as we’d hoped.) So watch for those later!

Instead, she tried to save it. The car see-sawed back and forth a number of times, and I didn’t know whether to zig or zag to avoid hitting her. It was qualifying, so I just patiently waited it out, but if it had been the race and I’d been in a real hurry … I don’t know. She’s lucky she didn’t get hit.

If you just stomp on the brakes in that situation, the car might spin, sure … but it’ll at least travel in a straight line while it spins, and everyone behind will be able to easily avoid it.

If you prefer to skip downloading the Silverlight browser plugin, you can see the video here.

The only endurance race I’ve ever driven in was the wacky “24 Hours of LeMons“, a play on the world-famous french race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.  In LeMons, however, there is a spending limit of $500 on the car (i.e, they are all crapcans that aren’t likely to be able to make it through to the end of the race, in other words, “lemons”, and our race took place on the tiny “road course” at Altamont Raceway.

With the help of the LemonLappers team though, we were able to win that one.   But it wasn’t so clear that my Go, Dog. Go! Racing team, with me, Rod McLane, and Ali Naimi, would be able to win this one.  Because we were running in the “O” class, which stands for Over, which consists of all production-based cars with an engine larger than 1.7L.  In other words, a supercharged Corvette would be in the same class.

In reality, the two entries in O that were really overdogs for us were a pair of Panoz GTS Coupes.  As long as they kept running, I thought they’d easily win, and we’d be battling for the “best of the rest.”

One of the things that make enduros different from a regular SCCA sprint race is that you have to do pitstops.  Our races are normally so short that we never stop.  But the rules for this race require that each team makes two pitstops of at least 5 minutes each.  Given that we had to make two stops, I figured we’d have three drivers.  The question was … how far can this car go on one tank of gas?  Could it make it 1/3 of the 4 hours on one tank?  I really didn’t know, although my back of the envelope calculations said it could.

Unfortunately, I discovered during the regional on Saturday that my fuel gauge didn’t seem to be working right.  So, we’d be driving until either it was time to change drivers (roughly 75-80 minutes), or until the car started sputtering.  We’d just have to see how it went.

We spent the afternoon on Saturday getting the car ready.  Fresh front brake pads and rotors went on, and we moved Rod’s seat and radio harness from his Miata to my car.  His seat was a better fit for all three of us.  Unfortunately, Rod was still pretty scrunched into the car and Ali and I had to stretch a bit.  Next time: a seat slider.

To complicate matters further, to save money we decided to run the race on some tires that Ali already had, Kumho V710s in 225/45-17.  I normally use the Hoosier R6 in 245/40-17.  The narrower Kumhos looked a little funny on the 8.5″ wheels, but I didn’t think it would really be much of a difference.

The track was open for qualifying from 9:00-10:30.  I went out first on a set of scrubbed tires to get the feel for the difference, and not surprisingly, there wasn’t much of a difference.  They definitely felt a little bit slidier, if that’s a word, but generally okay.  I ran a few laps and then came in to hand the car over to Rod.  At that pitstop we discovered that the tires build up pressure a lot more than the Hoosiers, so we bled them back down to a more reasonable level.

Rod took a bunch of laps and then handed the car over to Ali.  At that time we put a fresh set of tires on so that they could get a little bit scrubbed before the actual race.

The race started after only a 1 hour break.  We’d decided that I would start the race, then Rod, then Ali, same order that we’d practiced in.   I snarfed a hot dog and got ready to go.  There were 37 cars in total, 12 of which were in our class.  We had qualified 14th overall, and 4th in our class.  In front of us in class were the two Panoz GTS Coupes, and an MX-5 Cup professional racer.  I actually felt we’d have a shot at the MX-5 Cup car but not at the two Panoz’s.  But Ali was confident that the two fast cars would break, that we’d beat the MX-5, and ultimately win the class.  Who knew?  Anyway, all around these cars on the grid were a whole bunch of Spec Racer Fords, just to complicate matters.

This is a 4 hour race, and in the driver’s meeting they’d told us not to try to win the race in the first turn, but … guess what happened.  Two pace laps in which the guy in the Spec Racer next to me really wanted to be NEXT to me all the way around, and then the start … and of course, there was racing, and a wreck.  3rd on the grid was a Van Diemen sports racer.  Somehow it got sideways, probably “with help,” and then another car (an RX-7, I think) ended up T-boning him in the side.  We went full-course yellow a few turns later, but it seemed like I was out there with a bunch of rookies.  A saw at least 1 pass under the double-yellow, but some cars didn’t stop racing on that 1st lap for 3 more corners!  Fairly pathetic.  We had a clean restart, but then went full-course yellow again on lap 9 to retrieve a disabled car.

After that restart, I had a great race for several laps with whoever was driving the MX-5 Cup car (I assume it was Ara Malkhassian). Really enjoyed it.  We passed each other several times between lap 11 and lap 38, when our car sputtered in T6 as it ran low on gas and I pulled into the pits at the end of that lap.

At this point, we were in 3rd place overall.  I hopped out of the car and Rod hopped in.  Ali fueled the car while I held the fire extinguisher.  The rules are that those two jobs must be done by people in full fire-safety gear, and we didn’t have anyone else to do it for us.  So Rod got in, and Sterling (Rod’s Dad and crew chief) got him all buckled up.  And Ali and I just stood there, watching the fuel TRICKLE into the car.  It was very frustrating.  We knew we needed to get it full, but it just took absolutely forever.

Ultimately, we sent Rod back onto the track after putting in only 10 gallons in 12 looooong minutes.  The stop was required to be at least 5 minutes, but those extra 7 minutes just killed us.  Put us 3 laps behind of where we should have been … and the car wasn’t even full of fuel!

So, out goes Rod.  He ran some very fast laps, and basically just stayed out there until the car started sputtering again 30 laps later (note to self … roughly 3 laps/gallon).  He didn’t have the luxury of having any full-course yellows like I had at the start to extend the stint.  Ultimately his fast lap was only 0.9 slower than my fastest lap, and that in a car that he had never driven before, that he didn’t fit in very well, and on far more “used” equipment than I had.  Really nice job.

He managed to move up from 29th position overall (that’s right, we dropped from 3rd to 29th on that stop) to 16th before he had to pit for more fuel.  This time, while Sterling helped Ali get into the car, I fueled while Rod held the extinguisher.  This time we were able to get the car totally full in only 8 minutes, by just using a funnel without our filler hose.  Those 3 minutes above the required pitstop length still hurt us though.

Anyway, Ali returned to the track in 25th place and moved up to 18th before time ran out after we completed 101 laps.  He too ran very quickly, turning in laps as fast as Rod, with brakes that were nearly totally spent and tires that had nearly 100 consecutive hot laps.  I guess I picked good teammates!

Bottom line is that we spent 10 extra minutes in the pits, and at Thunderhill that’s worth 4 or 5 laps.  We finished 4th in class with 101 laps, but 2nd place completed 104 laps.  I’m not big on “what-ifs”, but it sure looks like if we had our pitstop act together, we could have finished 2nd.  As it turns out, the one Panoz GTS that completed the race ended up the overall winner, completing 106 laps.  So it’s conceivable that we could have won this race.

Well, it was a learning experience.  I’m really proud of the fact that the car held up great, even with undersized, untested tires, with two drivers who had never driven the car before, and with a faulty fuel level gauge.  It stayed fast and consistent from beginning to end.  We didn’t make contact with anything, and nothing broke.  Despite our inefficient pitstops, altogether, no doubt it was a successful enduro debut!

We had Rod’s ChaseCam bullet-cam in there, hopefully recording most of the race successfully.  Perhaps I’ll be able to get some of that posted soon.  The full official results are posted here.

And with that, the 2008 season is over!  Looking forward to a really fun 2009!

I was looking forward to the weekend even though it was way up at Thunderhill, primarily because the track was repaved this summer and this would be our first chance to drive on the new pavement.  Quick review: the track is smooth and quite grippy.  The exit berms are also very gentle so they are easy to use.  Some of the apex berms are a little taller than they used to be, but nothing too dramatic.  In any case, I figured that most classes would set a new track record, although with the high air temps (upper ’80s) and new very black pavement, perhaps conditions weren’t optimal.

Our schedule was very nice, with the first session on Friday right after lunch.  That meant that I could drive up Friday morning instead of Thursday night and still have plenty of time to get everything ready.  I made it with about 20 minutes left before express registration closed, so it turned out to be no problem at all.

As far as competition goes: my main ITR competitor, James Heth, locked up the 2008 series win at the last race, primarily due to me missing two double weekends this season.  So since he had nothing to lose, he decided to change his car up a bit and drive it in ITE instead of in ITR.  To do that, he removed the 300 lbs of ballast he carries around, added a fancy rear wing, and hooked up his ABS brakes.  That all meant that not only would he be a lot faster, but he would be racing in a different race group.  And my chief rival all season, Doug Makishima, had a suspension failure in his ITS BMW at the last race, and rather than try to get it all fixed up with only a 3 week break, he decided to rent another ITS car (this time a Miata) just to secure enough points to win his ITS championship.  He was unable to get to the track in time for qualifying due to an overseas business trip, so he’d have to start the race from the back.  With James in a different race and Doug starting from the back in an unfamiliar car, it seemed like I wouldn’t have much competition.  Oh well.  I’d consider it practice for Sunday’s enduro instead.

The early afternoon practice session was my first opportunity on the new pavement.  It was obvious right away that it was smooth and grippy.  My fastest lap was a 2:06.1, a track record, but since it is a practice session it doesn’t actually count.  Qualifying was a couple of hours later, and the weather was much warmer, but I pulled of a 2:06.5 in that session and that was an official record.  The car felt a little funny in that it really didn’t seem like it was accelerating as well as the morning, it wasn’t getting up in the revs in the fastest part of the track.  No explanation for that other than the hot weather.  Still, I was on the overall pole, ahead of 2nd place by multiple seconds.

Our race was Saturday morning at 10:20.  Cooler still and with no traffic for the first few laps, I was able to snap off a 2:05.5 in the early going.  But with absolutely no pressure from behind and no one to try to catch up to, I just ran consistent laps.  Oddly, on the last lap, the car stumbled in two corners like it was out of gas … yet the gauge was reading just under 1/2 tank.  Anyway, I ended up winning the race by about 50 seconds over the 2nd place driver.  Pretty uneventful, really, for a season finale.  Well, the weekend was mostly about the enduro anyway!

I will have video from the race posted later this week.  In the meantime, you can peruse the results …

Specifically for my races, James will be there to compete in ITR (although he has already clinched the 2009 championship, due to me missing two double weekends), and in the enduro, well, our class (”O”) is the largest of the classes with 12 entries.

Of course, the entry deadline has not yet passed, so the numbers will probably climb a little.  I’m really looking forward to the weekend!

EDIT 10/21: Regional is up to 287 entries, and 38 in the enduro (13 in “O”).  Unfortunately James has chosen to switch to ITE in group 1, so that he could run his car in a different configuration.  Well, I’ll still be having fun, and the enduro should be a blast!

Saturday’s race was made interesting because it was a little damp.  But for Sunday’s races, I turned the camera around and faced it out the back window, which is really where the action was happening.  I’d say that the first race on Sunday was the most exciting.

Enjoy the videos!  Links are below:

• Saturday race
• Sunday race #1
• Sunday race #2

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!

Got down to the track before 7am on Friday.  Plenty of time to get unloaded, paddock area set up, registered and car prepped before my 10:30 practice session.

I believe I was fastest overall in the practice session but the lap times weren’t anything to write home about.  The track felt slick and the car was understeering even more than normal.  But partway through the session we had a “black-flag-all” situation, which means that the session was temporarily stopped while the fantastic SFR safety crew cleaned up some issues (in this case, cars stuck in the gravel traps that line Laguna Seca these days.)So, I pulled into the pits.  Just after I came to a stop, one of the pit workers jogged towards my car with a fire extinguisher.  I assumed he was just getting into position (after all, they always have a fire extinguisher at their side), but I saw him looking at my left front wheel, and it was only then that I noticed smoke coming from it!  He told me that the brake caliper itself was smoking.  That’s not normal!  But the brakes had felt totally fine, so when the session resumed, I just headed back out.

There was a very quick turnaround for our qualifying session at 1:00, and not only did I have to figure out what was up with the brakes, but we had to eat lunch!  Fortunately Rod & Sterling McLane were there with me and got me motivated.  We had a quick lunch while everything cooled down, at least a little bit, and got to work on the car.

No doubt that the front brake pads were getting towards the end of their life, but they weren’t gone yet.  Still, I decided to switch back to some used Hawk pads that I have, assuming that these Performance Friction pads that I’d been using just get really hot when they get worn down, and that was the cause of the smoking.  We changed the brakes on the (still quite hot) right front, then moved over to the left front, which had been smoking in the pits.  Well, it turns out that there was some tire rubber that had gotten wedged into the caliper and was basically melting on the piston.  I’m sure that was the source of the smoke, nothing to worry about.

It was quickly time for qualifying.  I headed out there and turned a couple of fast laps early, despite having a bunch of slower cars in front of me.   But I stayed out for the entire session, feeling confident that a bunch of people would stop early, and I’d get some clear track.   Although I had one decent lap early, my last two laps were the fastest, the last of which was good for a new qualifying record.  It wasn’t all good news though.  Halfway through the session, I was trying to pass a couple of slower cars.  One of them, an ITB Fiero, spun going through the corkscrew.  The car behind him, an ITA Miata, got hard on the brakes to avoid hitting the Fiero.  Just then I came over the crest to find the Miata with the brakes on, where no brakes should be, and the Fiero sideways right in front of him.  I had too much momentum and ended up hitting the Miata square, nose to tail. But fortunately, there was absolutely no damage to either car, although it felt like a pretty hard hit.

Also during that qualifying session, my rival for most of this season, Doug Makishima, had an incident with a slower Miata as they approached the corkscrew.  The stewards had a hard time figuring out who was at fault, so both drivers had their qualifying times thrown out … which meant that they had to start at the back of the pack.  Assuming the race was dry, it looked like Doug wasn’t going to be a factor — or a source of fun.)

Friday night was supposed to be windy and wet … so instead of the usual overnight paddock behavior (I cover the car and lower the canopy over it), I tucked everything back into the trailer, and headed home for the night.

I pulled into the paddock at about 8:15 Saturday morning.  It was lightly raining for most of the trip down and the roads were wet, but the forecast was looking decent for my 11:50am race.  But it had definitely rained, a lot, overnight.  The paddock had some puddles — see the photo!

Fortunately, we were paddocked on higher ground.  The pavement was wet but no standing water around us.  Phew.

Rod’s race was the first session of the day, at 8:30.  So, I got myself situated in the T4 grandstands and was ready to watch.  It was not raining but it was plenty wet.

As the cars came around on the pace lap, I saw Rod.  Then as the cars came down the hill to prepare for the start, the track announcer said that they were going to have an additional pace lap, because the safety crew needed to rescue a car stuck in T6.  Okay, those Miatas are nuts, someone went off the track on the warm-up lap!  So they came around again behind the pace car, and … no Rod.  I waited for the start, thinking I just must have missed one red Miata in a sea of Miatas, but, nope, he wasn’t there.  Guess it was Rod that had been stuck in T6!  So, I headed back to the paddock, and he and Sterling were there.  Apparently the differential blew up.  And the spare was back in Livermore.

So, Sterling headed back home to pick up the spare diff while Rod and I got to work removing the old one.  It’s quite a bit easier in a Miata than it is in a Z3, it was out in about 15 minutes or less, and we didn’t even know what we were doing.

Finally it was time for my race. The weather had been a big concern and it had been on-and-off light showers all morning, with the sun poking through 2 or 3 times, and that looked to continue through our session.  But at the time that we got onto grid before the race, it was not raining and the racing line on the track was basically dry.  Phew!  Good thing, because I didn’t have rain tires.

I was on the overall pole.  On the outside of me was Eric Knudstrup in his 2nd-generation RX-7 in ITS.  Behind me on the inside of the 2nd row was James Heth, 2nd place in ITR in his Honda S2000.  Outside of him, returning to the local ITS competition was Larry Cooper in a “brand new” Datsun 240Z that he had built over the last 3 years after his old car got wrecked.

Eric and James drive relatively torqueless cars compared to the inline-6s of Larry and me.  Based on the last race at Infineon, I knew that with a nice slow start, about 5000rpm in 2nd gear (I think that’s about 45 mph), I could easily blow those guys away when the flag dropped.  So, I maintained that nice slow pace as we pulled out of T11 towards the start-finish line.  But Eric, to my right, just kept on creeping faster and faster, until he was about 2 car lengths ahead of me.  Since I’m on the pole, I get to control the pace, and that’s not allowed.  I knew that they would wave off the start, and sure enough, they did.  The next time around Eric was where he was supposed to be and we got the green.

I got a good start and stayed in the lead.  But in my mirror, wow, Larry’s 240Z just blew everyone else away.  Eric fell back to 4th, with Larry and James in 2nd and 3rd respectively.  Larry pressured me for a couple of laps, until I slowly worked out a gap. Eric Knudstrup’s Mazda was too loud (Laguna Seca has some strict noise restrictions) and he was black flagged … and because he’d already been warned once over the weekend, that meant that his weekend was over, right then and there.  So then there were 3.  James maintained pressure on Larry and got around him on lap 4 … and then he came for me!  James’ best track is definitely Laguna Seca.  I was driving my car for everything those tires and brakes had left in them.  I kept a small gap to James (maybe 2-5 car lengths) for most of the race … fortunately.  He was unable to get right up to my bumper, which meant that he was unable to make a pass.  And that’s how we finished, with the ITR cars finishing 1-2, the way it’s supposed to be!  It was a great race and it was a great way to finish.  The winning margin was less than 2 seconds, but for most of the race, it was a lot closer than that.

A few times during the race there were some very light rain showers … enough to get me to turn the wipers onto “intermittent” but not enough to really wet down the track.

After the race, Rod and I had lunch, and just as we ate, Sterling returned with Rod’s spare differential.  So after lunch we got right down to business and got that installed into Rod’s car so that he could make it out for his qualifying session at the end of the day.

Then it was time for my qualifying session.  This qualifying would determine the starting order for both of Sunday’s races, so it was fairly important.  But it was fairly uneventful.  I was able to run one fast lap in the 1:43s early, but generally never got a clean lap.  But like Friday’s qualifying, I stayed out until the very end, and ran two quick laps right at the end … once again, setting a new qualifying record (1:43.303).  And this time, it was good for an overall track record, although only a few hundredths of a second faster than the old record, which I set earlier this year in a race.

Sunday morning came.  I arrived at the track at about 7:30 to get prepped and to watch Rod’s 8:30 race.  This time, I watched from on top of the new victory podium that the track has set up for the upcoming Rolex races, along the front straight.  It was a fairly uneventful race for Rod, except for a spin in the corkscrew.

Time for the first race.  Based on how Saturday’s race went, I decided to face my video camera backwards.  I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, but I hope that was a good decision!  The starting order was me on the pole, with Steve Borlik alongside in the same car that Eric Knudstrup was disqualified in.  Steve and I had some great races in the last couple of years.  But also in the top 5 were Doug and Larry, and those three were all in the same class (ITS) and have a lot more history than I have, so they were really looking forward to racing with each other again, I’m sure.  James started outside the 2nd row in 4th.

Once again, I did the same slow start, and not surprisingly, Doug and Larry got a good head of steam on Steve and James.  In fact, Steve got shuffled from 2nd back to 5th on the start, but managed to pass Larry and move up to 4th on the first lap.  But there was a lot of pressure within the pack behind me on that first lap, so I was able to open up a decent and comfortable gap quickly.

But then on lap 3, Doug’s right front suspension broke in turn 5, and he ended up stuck in the gravel trap on the outside of that turn, with a broken strut and a broken brake line, and that would end his weekend.  We had two laps of full-course yellow while they cleaned that up, and thus, I lost the big margin I’d built up.  James was now in 2nd place and now he got to restart right behind me.  But I continued to use the same restart strategy, and it worked pretty well.  Unfortunately, we only got one green flag lap before we had another full-course yellow … it’s times like these that make me hate Laguna Seca, they really messed it up for cars when they made it safer for motorcycles back in 2005, because when cars go off now, they just get stuck in the gravel traps, requiring tow trucks to pull them out.

It wasn’t until after the race that I learned what really happened to Doug.  He really needed points from this race, so he tried to make arrangements to be the third driver in the Knudstrup/Borlik RX-7 of the weekend.  Unfortunately, because he’d already done the first race under that particular sanction, it somehow wasn’t allowed for him to switch cars for the 2nd Sunday race, even though it was in the same class.  So, he packed up and left.

Anyway, we restarted again, pretty much the same as the first one, we ran a few more laps, I widened the gap just a bit, and I finished the race in 1st place, almost 3 seconds in front of James.

I then had a long break until my 3rd race of the weekend.  One of the ways I passed the time was to get on the radio with Mike Monegan for the group 3 race.  He has two crew radios, so his friend Frank and I could both talk to him.  I went up to the timing & scoring tower, and Frank watched from the ALMS winners podium that’s set up along the front straight in preparation for their big race coming up in a couple of weeks.  Unfortunately, something happened with the radio wiring inside Mike’s car, so Frank and I were just talking with each other … but not with Mike.  Just in case he could hear us but we couldn’t hear him, we pretended like we were talking to him, but in reality, it didn’t work.  Oh well.  Mike’s race wasn’t very exciting for him, but there was an epic battle between a couple of Porsches so I was happy to be able to watch it.

Finally, late in the day, time for race 3.  The starting order was, of course, the same as race 2, except that Doug wasn’t in there. Mike Monegan graciously volunteered to be on the radio with me during the race, thanks Mike, I enjoyed it!  At the start, once again, Larry’s 240Z showed huge power at the slow pace and he rocketed into 2nd place, and I think if he’d really threatened for it, he could possibly have gotten inside me going into turn 2, but fortunately, he didn’t try.  Steve was in 3rd and I watched the two of them exchange positions a couple of times, and their battle allowed me to get away.  About mid-race though, Steve finally got himself clear of Larry and he really turned up the flame, slowly closing the gap.  I was nervous!  But then, a Miata spun into the wall on the exit of turn 4 on the inside … which isn’t all that uncommon.  That brought out a full-course yellow and closed up the field again.

Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be good for me.  But that also allowed Larry to catch up to Steve.  And with Larry’s huge restart power, that meant that Steve had to worry more about Larry passing him than about me … so he basically conceded the race to me, left a big gap behind me, and tried to control the restart with Larry.  I guess it worked because Steve managed to stay in front on the restart and for the rest of the race, but he never managed to catch up to me.  So after 3 final laps under green, I won my 3rd race of the weekend!

It was a great weekend, with 3 wins in 3 races.  Unfortunately it never had the kind of close bumper-to-bumper battling that I’ve had the last couple of trips to Infineon, but I’ll take them!

So, with only the double-points season finale left, I find myself in 2nd place in the points, due to the fact that I skipped two double weekends earlier this summer.  By just finishing all three races this weekend, James clinched the 2009 ITR championship.  Congratulations!

Watch for the in-car videos (facing forward in the first race, backwards in the next two races) to be posted soon!

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.