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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! 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! At this weekend’s race I tried two new things: Performance Friction brake pads, and the new HANS sliding tethers.
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. 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.
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!
Wow, what an awesome weekend at Infineon! At first I got a little nervous when I saw that Mike Courtney was on the entry list in ITR. He hasn’t been out for a couple of years, but he was very quick in his ITS BMW 325i, which is now in ITR with more power and less weight. But I wasn’t going to dwell on that — someone faster than me is exactly what I need to get me to really push harder. I was also really looking forward to being in group 5. Even though they are in theoretically slower cars, it seemed likely that I would have a great race with the two fastest ITS guys (Steve Borlik in a 2nd-gen RX7, and Doug Makishima in an E30 BMW), and also with the fastest ITA driver, Donna Gilio in an Integra. Someday when I really finish building my car, I’ll be faster than all of these people, but for now … it’s a great race!
NASA NorCal published the schedule for the April race weekend, and I have to say, it’s pretty lousy. Each day, there’s a 10-minute practice, a 20-minute qualifying session, and a 20-minute race. And those times are TOTAL, including pace car laps, cool-down laps, etc. The SCCA weekends have 30-minute practices, 20-minute qualifying, and 30-minute races — and those are the actual durations of those events. SCCA includes a buffer between each race group to get one group off the track and another one on. NASA includes no such buffer so the published times have to include those group setup times. The preliminary entry list for the upcoming SCCA race was published this week, and I’m very pleased to see 3 ITR competitors for the season opener! In addition to the two regulars from 2007, a big welcome goes to Michael Courtney in an E36 BMW 325. Bring ‘em on, I’d love to see more!
One of the things that I had to give up when I switched from National racing to Regional racing was that I was no longer eligible for most of the SCCA contingency programs I was involved in. For those who don’t know, a contingency program basically boils down to cash awards for doing well in races, but it’s not prize money from the event itself, but rather, it’s money from the companies that supply equipment. For example, car companies like Mazda, Honda, BMW, VW, Subaru, GM and others will give you money if you win the right races in their cars. And the tire companies participate too: Hoosier (my brand of choice), Kumho, and Hankook participate, in general.
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