The first two wins in the new Factory Five Racing #48 Daytona Coupe Gen 3 R!

This past weekend NASA Northeast racers gathered at NJMP Thunderbolt and had some great racing. Mom and I made the long haul to NJMP from NH. In attendance paddocking together were Wayne Patterson in his 427ci FFR Challenge car, Scott Chambers in his AIX mustang and Nick Derosa in his GTS2 BMW.



Friday test day was uneventful with a total of 4 practice sessions. Still battling front pad knock-back and will try to put on the stock 1998 Mustang Cobra R brakes back on to test to see if floating calipers remedy my problem later in the weekend. I also participated in the Comp school fun race Friday evening and had fun picking on (I mean mentoring) newly licensed racers including Mike Phillips, in yet another Corvette soon to be in ST2 trim!

Saturday schedule was practice in the morning, qualifying around lunch time and race in the afternoon. I decided to skip practice as new tires were getting fitted to the wheels I would be using the rest of the weekend, and got plenty of running the previous test day. This allowed me to spectate the Thunder race group, and was finally able to witness Wayne driving by at full tilt in his FFR Challenge car with the big block engine. Wow that thing sounds great!!! Adrian Wlostowski in the Corvette – my usual competition was instantly up to speed running a 1:25.499.



Wayne heading for practice

Qualifying Saturday was very interesting due to weather, it threatened to rain all day, and when we went to line up for qualifying the drizzle started. Both Adrian and I were on dry running tires, with Adrian making the move first to get out of line going back to swap tires. I followed Adrian’s lead. Wayne with no rain tires on hand pulled his car back into the trailer. Nick and Carl Thompson helped me change to the wet weather wheels/tires and I go back in line right behind Adrian. Grid released the cars on track and right away we get black flagged due to a couple of cars having off’s due to lack of traction. Unfortunately Mike (new rookie racer) was one of those who had an incident 🙁 They brought all the cars into the pit lane while the track collected the stranded racers. Once everything was cleaned up we go to qualify again, but with no real dry or clean running track both Adrian and I were unable to set a fast lap, we would start the race Adrian in p5, and me in p6. Our fellow ST2 competitor in a Mitsubishi Evo John Robbins started p1.



Carl Thompson came to visit once again, Wayne in the middle and me on the right.



The race started with Adrian and I chasing hard John in the Evo and by lap 1 we had passed John for the lead of the race overall, me shadowing Adrian. Both were pushing real hard and were lapping some fast laps with Adrian having the advantage on the straights, and me really catching him up in turn3 the very fast kink. Adrians car seemed very loose, he was sliding the rear of the car more then usual, so I maintained the pressure. His car had an issue and close to the end of the race I see steam coming from the left side of the car and him instantly pulling to the right letting me through. His serpentine belt running the water pump and power steering broke forcing him to retire from the race giving me the win, and I even won overall in the Thunder race group! John in the Evo came in 2nd, Alan Cohen in the Cadillac CTS-V 3rd, John Gatzemeyer in another Corvette 4th, and Adrian classified 5th 4 laps down.