FFR PDG GTM Triple Race Weekend

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Well, things went pretty well this weekend, but could also have been better.

In short the trucks found some cash and horsepowered up...to rumors of around 500HP. Troy set a practice time that was faster than the GTM has ever turned at Thunderhill, and combined with a tire budget for this race that was easily well over $5000, we found ourselves a bit behind the 8 ball.

There was no qualifying for either Saturday's or Sunday's race so nothing really to say there. Screw up by NASA in the morning warm up schedule put us starting at the back on Sunday. Not really an issue though, as far as I'm concerned.

Saturday we ended up 5th and Sunday we ended up 3rd. Car drove well and thanks to some detail work done by the guys in the shop on the linkage, the Mendeola S5 shifted like butter again all weekend long. Guest driver Mike Henderson commented at how easy the gearbox was to shift. I can verify, IT WAS!

Speaking of the guest driver, Mike Henderson ran the FFR PDG GTM on Saturday in the Time Trial event, where you are on the track with other cars and able to pass just like a regular racing event, but all that is scored is the fastest lap times in four sessions on the track. Mike won the TTU event by 2 tenths of a second over a big horsepower Corvette to bring home our first trophy of the weekend! Pretty impressive considering the fact that he had never driven the car and never driven the track before! He was turning 1:58s for lap times and the best I did was 1:56s, so to say he picked it up quick would be an understatement. His previous IMSA and SCCA experience really showed.

All in all a good weekend considering, and I think we are still in the hunt for year end points. The car looked great, has gotten the nickname "the Captain America car", and drove into the trailer under it's own power. We brought home a 3rd place bowling trophy, but if Troy continues to bump things up, it will be tough to keep up...unless we step it up too. Although I will say that I believe the longer the race, the less benefit the cubic dollars are to the truck.

Great, fun weekend, and I just want to say "THANK YOU" to FFR and Richard, Yvonne, and all the crew for giving me a great car that performed well the entire weekend.

Should have some good video, and I will post it ASAP.

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Here's the link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GalEmyMG9o8

Battery died early, and camera didn't work on Sunday.