http://www.sfrscca.org/Results/20030921/
My son and
I drove up Friday night so that we would be well rested. We dropped the car off
and went to the motel. We got up Saturday morning and went to the track to
finish unpacking. We went out on the old tires so that we could a before and
after with the new tires that would go on later.
My practice
times were disappointing, 2:18.0. I've turned better times, 2:13.9 2001, 2:12.2
2002, 2:13.4 2003. The car was pretty loose on the old
tires and possibly do to alignment issues.We put two
new tires on the car for qualifying which helped the handling but I was not
getting in to a rhythm. We did adjust a few more of the alignment settings
which also helped. My qualifying time was 2:16.106 which was a disappointment. So I qualified 11th overall out of 31
and 5th in ITA out of 14.
Sunday was
another day and the day of the race. We put the other two new tires on the car
so that we now had two tires with on heat cycle and one set brand new. The rear
alignment was way out so we adjusted that just before the race. Total toe was
okay but it wasn't straight which would have be
addressed at home. At the start I ended up starting 10th since Ron Carroll had
blown an oil plug during an earlier race. I had a good start and managed to get
by the 1st place ITB car. John Schmale was past
the ITB car and on my tail on the next lap and stayed there for four laps. He
got a little sideways going in to turn 10 which put the BMW on my tail. I was able
to keep a decent distance on them so that they never felt I was in the way. Bob
Bradfield in his gas cap missing RX-7 fell back and I picked up another spot as
he began to run out of gas. I ended the race 8th overall and 3rd in class. I
never caught up with Tachi who was running 2:12.6
while I was running 2:14.3.
At least I made an improvement in my times but still not the