Weather forecast was not promising; highs moving into the upper 90's as the weekend progressed. Stories from Thursday practice were not encouraging, so the weekend looked to be as much about surviving as racing.

Morning practice turned out to be fairly pleasant, as I spent the morning coaching another driver, and managed to get in one fairly "hot" lap, but well off the pace of the quick lap of Lee Douglas at 2:03.3.

Qualifying heated up considerable, and Lee was not able to maintain his morning pace. I was surprised to find a 2:04.1 was good enough for pole, with Jonathon Allen off-pole at 2:04.5. It was beginning to look like Deja Vu from last month's races at Thunderhill. One of the lessons learned from the last event was to better manage the tires as the race progressed. Hopefully, the "red mist" wouldn't override that plan.

The race was in the morning on Saturday, so there was hope for lower temperatures, but as expected, the weekend continued to warm up. It quickly became a two-man race and Jonathon and I gapped the field fairly quickly. I managed to get a decent gap in the first couple of laps, but Jonathon was clearly picking up the pace and would pull back, only to fall back a bit, but never more than 10 car lengths.

Lapped traffic managed to give me enough of a gap so I could do a bit of tire management. In hindsight, I probably just should have pushed harder rather than give Jonathon encouragement. He pulled back the gap as we came to the white flag and made a great run through T1 to nose up alongside as we came into T2. I had to leave a gap into the corner, and now is was going to be about how much grip we had left if we were going to hold the position out of T2. Once I saw a gap, I was was able to close the hole, but we still had a full lap to do, and the draft at TH is the enemy of the front driver, so it was going to come down to the final corners.

Jonathon was on my tail through T10, and I managed just a small gap through T11 into the braking point. I need to get T14/15 right or it was going to be a drag race to the finish. Hit my marks, peaked in the mirror and saw I still had a gap. Now it was a race to the finish and all I could do was hold my line. It the end, the gap at the line was .165, holding off Jonathon for the win (phew!)

We had qualifying on Saturday afternoon, and I was still committed to tire conservation, so qualifying was going to be a struggle as we took a lot out of the tires in the morning race. With a best of 2:04.7, I didn't expect much, so qualifying 2nd was another pleasant surprise.

No surprise was Jonathon Allen putting up the fast time (2:04.6), with Lee, Mike Smith, and Ed Railton all tight behind. Looking at the tires, I decided it was time to go back to the trailer and put on a backup set of front take-offs that I had put on the rears as the tread was much deeper than what I had left on the last race tires. Looking at Jonathon's tires on the grid, they were just about gone, so my thought was to hang on if I didn't get the jump, and wait for his tires to go. More worrisome was the "wild group" behind, all hungry for positions and points, so the strategy was simple; build a gap, the go racing.

Jonathon got a quick start and everyone got through cleanly. I was able to tuck under his tail and as we came around on the first lap I had a decision to make; try to make a drafting pass or work together to build a gap. I decided to tuck under his tail and we managed to pull a gap from the field. Jonathon was strong in T1 and managed a gap as I came to grips (or lack therof) with my tire decision). We managed to pull out a gap to the point where I stopped checking and got down to focusing on tire management and the right opportunity.

Halfway through I decided it was time to push, but it was clear the tires were not going to stand up to the task, so we waited for a mistake, or tires to run out. Suddenly, an opportunity as we were come up to a back-marker (deja vu, again), this time working to my advantage as I managed to pick up the back-marker just as we came to the front straight and got a clean draft all the way to T1 that was worth at least five car lengths.

In the end, Jonathon made no mistakes, his tires didn't wear out, and he managed to take his first win in the SRF class as I followed over the line 2.5 seconds behind, with Ed Railton 3rd, 10 seconds back in a battle with Mike Smith, and a great 5-car battle to the finish in 4-9. Fantastic race and congratulations to Jonathon for the win, and the clean and tight racing. I expect this is not going to be the last time we see him in that position!

Lee Douglas had a rough first lap and hand to make up some lost positions in the 2nd race.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=numW-tWZ7jc

Congrats to Bob for two well-driven races.

For the GIB (guys in back), here's a short video of the first race:

https://vimeo.com/49070984

Rich Kenny
SRF 33, San Francisco Region

Rich: Love the data overlay and the track map on that!

Dave: I saw Lee out there in the dirt on that opening lap wondered how he got there!

See you guys at Laguna in 2 weeks or so.

Todd,

It's an AIM Smartycam. Video with data overlay and now it also logs the data for use in their Race Studio software. Nothing like examining how slow you're going in excruciating detail!

Rich