Sprint 1

With 70 odd cars on the track qualifying was not easy. I didn't really get a clean lap and qualified 5th. I got a good start and ran 3rd for a while. Someone dumped oil all over corner 14 and we all almost ended up in a pileup. After a botched restart where Allan Lewis got past me, I ended up 4th. I was clearly asleep at the switch. Between too much Pizza and Beer the night before and several mechanical and electrical issues, the day was not going so well.

Sprint 2

Qualifying was based on the lap times of Sprint 1. Though I finished 4th, I had the second fastest time. So I started on the front row with Bassen on pole. We started on the back straight but Bassen chose the left side for some reason. This suited me just fine.

Unfortunately, due to some electrical problems, my tach had frozen at 5500 rpm. I also had Bassen's side pipes blowing about 5500 of his RPM in my left ear. So I was ready to go except when the flag dropped, nothing happened. I was in 5th gear! People blew by me on both sides. I quickly recovered to 3rd and Mark Marquis, Steve Bassen, and I were 1-2-3 for pretty much the entire race. Most of the time we were nose to tail in an E30 sandwich. Mark ultimately won by .13 of a second.

In all of my distraction, I didn't put new batteries in the camera. So I have great video up to and not including the start... This was some of the closest racing ever. Oh well.

Enduro

I started second on the grid with Steve Bassen on pole. Starting from the back straight, Steve chose the left side leaving me on the inside of the first corner - my preferred position anyway. On the start, we dragged down the straight and being on the inside, I took the corner. I them opened up a sizable gap ahead of Bassen. I held onto the lead for a long while.

Then on the unlucky 13th lap, disaster struck. My accessory drive belt disintegrated on the back straight and I lost power steering braking into corner 7. Under hard braking, the steering seemed locked. I slid off the track into the gravel trap. I hate gravel traps. Not wanting to get stuck, I did a Dukes of Hazard donut and drove carefully back on after madness.

I tried to nurse the car back to the pits slowly staying offline and out of the way as much as possible. Then suddenly in turn 12 the rear end let go and I spun out again. Unfortunately without the water pump my engine had barfed up a bit of coolant and John Dimoff also spun on it. Sorry. I only went through the gravel trap a bit this time. I hate gravel traps. I watched my mirrors for a hole in traffic and quickly escaped into the pits and retired the car...

This is from a spectator's perspective but I think I was lucky to start where I did...

Conclusion...

This was the first outing with the new wide-body car. It was a rushed effort for Raven to get the car together, but they did what they could to make it road worthy. We had intended to put a new Moton suspension on it but we just ran out of time. I raced it setup as before with my JRZ 2 ways. Somehow the car ended up about 2 inches too high. It had a certain "off-road" stance. This turned out to be an advantage with my 4 unplanned excursions... I only killed 2 splitters!

We were also unable to get the Pirelli DM slicks this early in the season so we raced on Grand-Am spec D2s. Bottom line is these cars are not heavy enough to put any heat into the hard as rocks D2s. It was a scorching hot weekend and I was pushing like hell. Still we only saw 160-180 degrees in the tires. 

On top of this I was fighting electrical problems all weekend. The battery could not hold a charge and it ultimately came down to some broken electrical connectors on the alternator cabling. All the messing around also fried a coil-pack and a set of spark plugs. Thanks to German Motor Werks and parts donated by my rival Steve Bassen, we got it all sorted out.

Given all the problems I did what I could. I still bettered by previous best lap time by a second or so to low 1:34s. So I guess I can be happy in that. I did what I could with what I had. I didn't win but I sure tried hard. Hopefully the spectators enjoyed the show.