[Fot] St. Louis SCCA National Races this past weekend

[fpspitfire at insightbb.com]

I went downt to St. Louis for my second event this year. It's much closer to my house (only 2.5 hours) and the track is fun, but not many places to pass and it uses part of the oval. 
Practice was good. I went out on the old tires to shake down the car and make sure nothing was wrong. 14 laps...turned a 1:17.8 without much trying. The rest of saturday was spent at the hotel in the air-con as it was 100 degrees out. 
Qualifying was on Sunday morning. I put the good tires on and headed out. I did about 6 laps and got down to a 1.15.9, good enough for 2nd of the 7 HP cars that showed up. Pole for HP was a 1.15.3. 
At race time it was 105 out. The HP pole sitter ended up starting from the back with a different car in a different class then switched to the HP car. So...it was me on point. I got the worst start I've ever had, and lost first. I followed for a few laps and then tried to pass in a spot that isn't for passing, but I needed to get by there to pull out a lead before the straight. I couldn't make it stick, so I sat behind and waited for a while. Water temp was a consistent 230 deg F and oil temp ran about 270 def F. It didn't make noise and kept running and didn't climb so I just ran with it. After about 15 laps the faster classes started lapping us. The clases may be faster in lap time, but through the twisty section they aren't as fast. One got by me going into the infield section and that allowed the HP leader to put a huge gap on me. So I decided I'd ride it out to the end. 
With 2 laps (i didn't know this though) to go I started onto the front straight and the car dropped to 3 cylinders. I decided just to run it until it blew...it's either something simple that won't hurt it, or something bad and it's already to late. as I got onto the front straight the HP leader had a big time engine blow-up. So I continued on figure the race had to be about over so I continued on 3 cylinders. Under all the smoke and stuff i missed the starters 1 to go signal. When i came back around I took the checkered flag and my first SCCA National win! 
It was a good weekend...motor problem was only a broken intake pushrod...it's fixed and I'm in Pennsylvania going to Pocono this weekend!

Aaron Johnson
#87 H-Prod Spitfire MkIV Southern Illinois Region SCCA
http://hpspitfire.servebeer.com