This past weekend Jim and I trailered down to Road Atlanta for the second East Coast race weekend of the year. Friday was a test/tune along with a 3hr enduro from 2pm to 5pm. After running the test/tune, Peter LaRose and I ended up running Peters car in the enduro, finished 4th overall but had some issues with the car.. during the race we removed the hood, trunk, Peter found the inertia fuel kill switch tripped when he was too aggressive over the rumble strips.
Saturday came along with typical practice in the morning, qualifying mid day, and race later in the day. My car ran great in a shortened qualifying session with only 1 hotlap, mine ended up being the fastest of the FFR Challenge cars (they red-flagged the session due to a Miata off track into the tirewall). During the race I led the challenge cars slowly to the starters flag, took the green and hunkered down for a great sprint race with Scott and Paul pressuring me hard on the first lap. Luckily they kept each other busy enough to let me get a gap allowing me to focus on running fast laps consistently till the checkered flag. After the race the skies opened up and torrential downpoor ensued to cause massive destruction to the easy-ups along with floating away some coolers! Once the rains stopped we were invited to a pulled pork bbq by the local street cobra in the area.
Sunday had us straight to qualifying not having the early practice session like on Saturday. I ran a great lap enough to set a new lap record of 1:39.5 once again starting on pole for the race. Things went a little different then Saturday, Paul skipping qualifying started back of our field leaving Scott’s attention solely on me. We had a great 3-4 laps driving at the limit until Scott got the advantage dealing with lapped traffic. He maintained a similar gap I had on Saturday for the win. During the last lap another Miata hit the wall hard after turn 7 causing a full-course yellow, then a red flag. During this full-course yellow another Miata behind me decided to completely ignore the 3 flag stations we passed between turn 2 – turn 5 having the red-mist in his eyes was extremely peeved I was going slow and proceeded to bump me twice to get me going.. then popped out of line and passed about 5-6 cars during this yellow flag/red flag time. He was DQd for doing this..
Overall a great weekend with excellent racing. I hope to have the same at the next event July 15-17 at MidOhio.
Pictures:
http://www.johngeorgeracing.com/gallery/index.php?/category/301
Videos:
FFR#48 Saturday’s Lightning incar – http://www.vimeo.com/25484228
FFR#48 Sunday’s Lightning incar – http://www.vimeo.com/25489485 (the end is the best part!!!!!!)
Jim’s FFR#52 Saturday Lightning – http://www.vimeo.com/25490046
Jim’s FFR#52 Sunday Lightning -http://www.vimeo.com/25491393
Scott McKay Saturday SpecE30 Blitz race incar -http://www.vimeo.com/25500825