The Competition Begins

Friday morning began sticker day, putting all the national sponsor decals on the cars and going through tech to have the car and equipment checked and have your tires stenciled so they could see at a glance that you had the correct One Lap tires on the car.  This is also the day that I got to meet my new transit driver Steve Barrett.  Steve is from the Cinncinati area and we have spoken on the phone but just met on Friday.  I am posting a couple of pictures showing me finishing stickers on the car and a picture of Steve.

On Saturday morning the competition began.  I was able to post a g force reading of .819 on the skid pad.  Last year I got 6th place with a .804 but the .819 was only good for 16th place this year.  Last year's .804 would have only placed 25th in this years event.  I guess the competition keeps getting tougher each year.  Some evidence of this is there are now 8 Nissan GTR's in the SSGT1 Big Bore class this year as well a great mix of awesome vehicles throughout the classes.

After the wet skid pad we went to South Bend Motor Speedway's paved 1/4 mile oval.  I have never run an oval before and the cereal bowl look and the wall can be intimidating.  I was able to come out of there with a 20th place and am now in 14th place overall.

Next we ran off 106 more miles to Joliet, Il. to Autobahn Country Club Raceway and run on the 2.1 mile South Course and the finishing order of this event would set the starting order for the rest of the week.  I didn't do as well as I had hoped and posted a 28th place finish.  I was hoping for a little better but that still puts me in the front half of the 75 cars to run in each event and will let us get going to the next event a little earlier.  Most days we will put on 450 to 620 miles going to the next racetrack after we do two events a that days track.  When we finished at Autobahn we then headed to Council Bluffs, Iowa 452 miles away to be ready to start Sunday at the Mid America Motorplex.  This was on heck of a day and we didn't get in our motel room until 1:30 am.  Tomorrow it is two events at Mid America then 460 miles to Hallet Oklahoma.

Stay tuned for more posts as I have the time to do them.