USTCC Round #4 Thunderhill

[crash]

WINNER!

Had a good time at Thunderhill this weekend. Unfortunately our competition did not show up. We usually see 5-6 cars in our class and we are battling with a BMW for the year end points, but no one showed up for our GT class race.

On a bright note, one of our sponsors, Ron Sutton of http://www.ronsuttonracetechnology.com/ was there to see us go from last to first overall!

We had a good qualifying time, but with the standing starts we are always starting with the other classes in front of us. An inverted start which makes for a very interesting turn one. Since we had no direct competition, we decided to let things sort out in front of us before making a run for the overall win. If for no other reason simply because we didn't want to get in the middle of anyone's race. This turned out to be the right call as there was bumping and rubbing going on in the middle of the pack for the first lap.

With a couple of cars leaving the track, and also the race, on lap two I got the call from our spotter that the field was single file, and so I started my quest to pass 17 cars in 15 minutes of racing. I was cautious and all was well, but with just a couple of laps to go I still had two more cars and we were hitting lapped traffic pretty hard. When the white flag came out I really did not think I had the juice to catch the lead car. That would change in turn 10, where I made up significant ground. I late braked into turn 14 and got a good run for the front straight and passed for the overall lead just a couple hundred feet before the checkered flag.

It was fun to achieve a minor victory of passing the entire field, even if they weren't in our class, but we also used this race weekend to do some valuable tire testing for the 25 Hour race that is held at Thunderhill at the end of the year in December.

All in all a very fun and productive weekend.

Thanks so much to Ali Arsham and the United States Touring Car Championship group, as well, of course, to all of our sponsors...Factory Five Racing, Baja Designs Lighting, Mendeola Transaxles, Champion Spark Plugs, Ron Sutton Race Technologies and all the volunteers that keep this effort going...for a great weekend of racing!

And CONGRATULATIONS to Carl Rydquist(our regular driver for this series) for the arrival of a beautiful baby girl on Friday!

[beeman]

Congrats on the overall win! Sounds like it was a short race?

[crash]

20 minute sprint race. Not what we are built to do, but fun none the less.

[Fraser D]

Nice one folks.
Congratulations!

[T4Twins]

Congrats crash!!!