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West Coast Challenge - Round 6
Monday, October
15, 2007-- The sixth round of racing for the West Coast Challenge
Series, Dave Standridge, Karen Salvaggio, TC’ McNett, Rick Anderson and
Robert Walter made the trip to Thunderhill raceway. After driving
through rain on Friday to get to the track, the five intrepid racers
were rewarded with spring-like conditions. The twist: The track would
be ran backwards (clockwise)! As it turns out, everyone agrees that it
is a lot of fun and learning a new track makes for an added measure of
focus.
After a “way too
short” warm up to start learning the track, everyone prepared to
qualify. After an eventful qualifying; Dave Standridge broke a
transmission, T.C broke a shock and Robert overheated late in the
session, the qualifying went as follows:
Dave Standridge- 2:10.447
Rick Anderson-2:11.688
Karen Salvaggio-2:13.301
Robert Walter-2:13.301
T.C McNett-2:24.513
With the stage set
for the Saturday race, we took the Green with a rolling start. At turn
1, Rick edged out Dave, but spun exiting turn 2 leaving the remaining
group to roar past. By the time Rick could restart, the other four had
put a huge gap ahead. In the meantime, T.C passed Robert and set sail
after Karen. T.C and Karen dueled for nearly half the race until Karen
had to retire due to some electrical gremlins. While Karen and T.C were
battling for position, Robert’s car temp went high enough for him to
decide to park it before anything major popped. In the end, it was Dave
Standridge for the win, followed by T.C, Rick (by default), Karen and
Robert.
Sunday’s weather,
again sunny and cool. Perfect!! Our schedule had us slated for 8:20 am
warm-up. To help the SOCAL folks get an early start home, we elected to
have our qualifying race at 8:20 and our main race at 11:50. The grid
for the qualifying race would be set by Saturday’s race results. As we
followed the pace car, Dave Standridge pulled off (the result of fuel
delivery problems). That left T.C at pole, followed by Rick, Karen and
Robert. At the green, all took off with a clean start on the cold
track. Shortly after the start, Karen had to pull off, also with fuel
delivery issues. That left T.C, Rick and Robert to duke it out for the
best time and race points. Rick tied an anchor to the back of T.C’s car
and the two went the rest of the race pretty much nose to tail. In the
end it was T.C (1:11.648), followed by Rick (1:11.207) and Robert
(1:11.625).
For the main race,
the grid would be Rick, Robert, T.C, Karen and Dave. At the start, Rick
blew the start by being in 3rd gear and everyone motored on
by but Dave. With Robert out in front, T.C was in second and Karen
third. By the second lap Dave was past Rick and off in pursuit of the
front three. On lap six, Robert had once again been bitten by the high
temperature problem and had to retire. With Dave having made his way to
the front, he had T.C nagging at his tail and Karen had to deal with
Rick trying to get by. Eventually, Rick got by Karen and set sail for
T.C. As the race wore on Rick and T.C fought it out for the second
place. On one lap, they swapped position 3 times in less than 30
seconds! Coming into lapped traffic on the last lap prevented any more
position changes. In the end, it was Dave for the win, followed by T.C,
Rick, Karen and Robert.
Overall, a great
weekend with good racing with good friends. Hopefully Robert can pin
point his heat issues and Karen has a chance to improve her “new” care
setup. Both will be fast at Buttonwillow next month for the last race
of the season.
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