Back home, back to my cable modem. Got to love the speed. I took some
pics and will post a link later.
I got home at 12:20 last night, not too bad considering the traffic
heading south on I-15 out of Las Vegas. That would be 702 miles in 9
hours, or 78mph average. It sure was a lot easier making a long drive
home after winning. :-)
The weather on Sunday was warmer, without any effect from wind/rain.
Heat may have affected some of the turbo cars. It may have also affected
some of the drivers.
Going into Sunday, I was leading CS by a good margin, putting me into
4th Open Challenge Qualifier. Since that was my best standing ever, I
was hoping for rain. No rain. The surface did not get grippier in that
everyone improved on Sunday. The main methods of improvement were to
figure out how to keep your speed up in the slalom, or go into the turn
around without plowing. For me, I knew my left side was not a good run
yet at 31.6 seconds. Mike Leuty in 2nd place dashed off a 31.4 on the
left to close the gap. I could see the Challenge qualifying money
slipping away.
I improved .10 on the right, and then did a clean 31.2 on the left. Mike
had a rerun on his last run, so I got to watch his run from impound
while biting my nails. He could not improve, so I retained the CS win
and a .717 differential, which ended up being the 2nd highest Open
Challenge qualifier. Woohoo!!
In the challenge, I was up against Ron Bauer in an S2000. Damn, I was
happy to just be in the challenge, but I wanted to get past the 1st
round. The advantage to me was I set my own index, and Ron was running
on Andy Mckee's times. It was all I needed. On the second round, I was
gridded against Abe Potter in the Volkswagen GTI. I felt pretty
confident now, tires were warm, and I finally felt in a groove about the
course, like I could do it over and over consistently.
But disaster..I missed the shift to 3rd on the way out (almost ALL of
this course was 3rd gear for me). I felt the bog in 5th, went bnack to
2nd, back to 3rd, then back to 2nd. I felt it all slipping away. I was
only .4 behind though. Switched sides and decided I had to have that
killer run. I almost did it, making up the .4 seconds, but .010 short.
Anyways, a good event. It was fun.
Randy Chase
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