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East Coast Challenge Series
Race #3
Beaver Run
June 11-12 2005 |
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After the rain and
rookie success of Tony Buffamonte (Buffalo, NY) at Kershaw, the East
Coast Challenge races shifted to Beaver Run outside of Pittsburgh. With
Mid-Ohio cancelled for snow, the weekend would potentially count for 1/3
of the points to win the championship.
Unfortunately Buffamonte missed the weekend due to some minor surgery
the week before, but points co-leader Brian Cates (Manassas, VA) was
there to add some valuable points. Marcus Motorsports accounted for most
of the field with a variety of drivers. With temps in the upper 80s and
nearly 90% humidity, cooling was not only an issue for the cars but for
the drivers as well.
Saturday morning showed Cates, Rob Mau (Richmond, VA), and Dan Elam
(Richmond, VA) in a Marcus car moving quick, but no one was really
pushing hard. Part of that was concern over closing speeds as the
Factory Five Challenge cars were placed (for the first time) with the
slower small bore cars. Qualifying dropped a couple of seconds off the
times and the race saw Mau, Chris Mitchum (Reston, VA), Cates, Jim
Schenck (Wareham, MA), and Sunny Hobbs (Richmond, VA) at the top of the
overall field. Elam was penalized for being late to a meeting and
banished to 19th overall for the start. Peter LaRose (Detroit, MI) and
Brian Sanders (Cincinnati, OH) also qualified well ahead of most of the
field.
Pictures courtesy
http://www.finishlineprod.net
As expected, the start was hot and heavy with Mau, Mitchum, and Cates
leaning on each other for the first turns. Mau and Cates continued to
swap the lead back and forth over the next three laps. Elam took his
frustration out on the slower cars to move up into fourth and then into
third when Mau lost his transmission. With Mau out of the way, Mitchum
moved back to challenge Cates hard and the two came across the finish
line nearly side-by-side with Cates taking the win. The constant racing
let Elam close the gap, but his hard driving in the early stages of the
race left his brakes overheated and Schenck was the fastest car late in
the race as he made his last turn move inside of Elam to capture third.
Sunday morning brought three important changes. First, the temperature
was slightly lower thanks to the hard overnight rain. Second, Mitchum
was determined to obliterate the small bore moving chicanes and break
the track record. Finally, rookie Paul Kaiser (Troutville, VA) obtained
his provisional license and promptly took his black #8 car out as the
fifth fastest in practice. That was fifth fastest overall. Qualifying
showed some sandbagging as Mitchum came out to break the track record by
0.003 seconds and the top six spots overall went to Factory Five cars
with Mitchum and Cates on the front row. Marcus-driver Mitchum brought
the field down fast and was rewarded with a quick green with he and
Cates side by side into turn one for each of the first four laps.
Schenck switched to new tires and was just a slight distance behind but
Mau had immediate brake problems that let Hobbs and Elam get past. A
full course yellow rebunched the field for several laps. When the pace
car finally came in, it was Cates setting sail and leaving the field
behind, but Mitchum and Schenck running him back down until he finally
used the traffic to get a lead he wouldn’t relinquish. Elam had
transmission problems and settled in to protect his position and hope
someone would break. But while the cars were hot, everyone else but
LaRose continued. A really entertaining battle between Sanders and the
rookie Kaiser came down to the very last turn with Sanders giving the
spot to Kaiser.
Next up for the East Challenge is Hyper-fest at Summit Point in July
where Cates will attempt to lock up the Championship. With Challenge
Cars
trading positions every lap and nearly every turn being contested, the
expected 10,000 spectators should be in for a real treat of entertaining
racing.
Dan Elam
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