2014 June Sprints

I was working so I have no hard info (times, breakage, etc.) but there was a practice session in the morning (which I was able to watch from T12) and Q1 occurred yesterday afternoon.

The GTL fight was awesome. Sargis, Bovis and Clark were swapping the fast lap continually.

In EP, Daniels, Brakke and Moser were at it pretty good.

In FP, Kannard has the field covered by several seconds with Froh, Lamb and Sturm in tow.

In HP, Trainer has Gauper covered by a second or so.

The Sprint race is later this afternoon at 1:40CT. There will be a split start as the STL crowd will be segregated from the prod/GTL folks.
 
Got a (brief) text on the GTLite. Chris Bovis 1st, Bob Clark 2nd, Steve Sargis DNF. Sargis and Bovis were in a fight for the lead. Going into Canada Corner on lap 2 or 3 Sargis broke a lower control arm. He was on the outside, three wide with Kannard and Bovis on the inside. Steve went straight off into the gravel trap. He's taking the car home for repairs. Chris Bovis went on to win. Congrats to Chris.

Someone else text the EProd; FProd and HProd racers and tell us what happened!!

Peter
 
EP - Qualifying showed there could be a good battle with the top 3 cars, but things changed quickly at the start. Brakke dropped out right away coming into the pits after one lap. Daniels and Moser battled for a few laps with Daniels pulling away by a good margin and never looking back. Moser stayed in 2nd with third place switching hands between Loughman and Simaras. Loughman pulled off with problems with Simaras taking over position.

FP - Kannard had the field covered and ran just ahead of Bovis for many laps. Lamb pulled away to secure a comfortable 2nd place. There was a battle for third between Froh, Sturm, and Hart. They swapped positions several times with Sturm pulling off and Froh having enough to take the final podium spot.

HP - Trainer led for many laps until Gauper caught and passed after a few lap battle. Trainer dropped back after that giving Gauper the win.

Feature full length race on Sunday. Weather is iffy and hopefully the rain holds off until the end of the last race.
 
Sunday's race had its moments but, in the end, it was the same as Saturday's race. Daniels, Kannard, Gauper, Bovis and Drago all won.

The weekend results can be found below:

http://www.scca.com/events/results.cfm?eid=6736

The weekend went off pretty smoothly. The weather was great (except for a 15 minute shower that shortened the AS, STU, T2, T3, T4, BSpec race). The car count was down (358 to 290 ish) but that may be a pattern in NorCon.

One final note.....the SM race had to be shortened because of an on track incident. There was a big incident on lap 4 that caused a FCY with safety car.....on the run up to the restart (before the green flew) they had a multi-car pileup in T14. Seven couldn't continue and there was 80% track blockage. Many more were involved. As there were only a couple of laps to go, management had to "checker next". When the cars that were involved were brought to tech, the carnage was unbelievable. Not one of them could roll on its own. All were on wreckers or tiltbeds. Thank God nobody was hurt. Here's my point.....many of the same cars run STL and some regions put STL with us. Reach out to event organizers and keep DOT shod car out of our run group and with their own ilk (STU, T3, T4, BSpec, etc.). How do we do that? Make sure that the prod/GTL entries are high enough to warrant our own group. They can't argue with that.

Dayle
 
So you are saying that if the SM/STL cars were on real race tires instead of DOT, they wouldn't crash?
 
Was told that carnage was caused by accordion affect at restart. Leaders accelerated after pace car pulled in and then slowed. This opened a big gap, temporarily. As the mid pack reacted to the gap, they met the lead pack.

Not sure different tires had any affect.

RJS
 
That is a stupid game to get the following cars "off the cam/out of power band" to gain an advantage.
I've tolerated it for years. Training is needed in maintaining a set speed.
 
Team tactics at the pointy end created the situation (gap, read what the players up front posted on their site) and others were trying to win or gain a position. Now, if passing started at the start/finis line after green thrown, might things be better? Road America is a specially bad start track because of group sizes (51 Spec Miata in this case) and the hill, can't see starter, depend on radio.
 
R. J. Sorensen":qeblt9ks said:
Was told that carnage was caused by accordion affect at restart. Leaders accelerated after pace car pulled in and then slowed. This opened a big gap, temporarily. As the mid pack reacted to the gap, they met the lead pack.

Not sure different tires had any affect.

RJS
Click to expand...

I wasn't implying that DOT tires were the cause of the incident. I was pointing out that SM drivers have earned a certain reputation for ricocheting off each other and sometimes they run in the prod/GTL grouping. One way to avoid being grouped with them is to get the prod/GTL headcount higher.

Dayle
 
Dayle, you then referred to us STU and Touring cars as "ilk". Frankly your comments are off base and offensive to those of us grouped into your stereotype. (Don't let a few bad apples spoil the bunch.) I see just as much bad driving from slick-shod cars in the back of the field holding up the faster DOT cars and I don't hold that against them. Please don't turn issues like this into an "us vs them" argument.
 
Matt93SE":5g5sxpzj said:
Dayle, you then referred to us STU and Touring cars as "ilk". Frankly your comments are off base and offensive to those of us grouped into your stereotype. (Don't let a few bad apples spoil the bunch.) I see just as much bad driving from slick-shod cars in the back of the field holding up the faster DOT cars and I don't hold that against them. Please don't turn issues like this into an "us vs them" argument.
Click to expand...

Matt,
My apologies. I meant no disrespect....I used the word 'ilk' as a shortened word for 'colleagues' or 'compatriots' (I was typing on a phone at the time). You are correct, there are misbehaving drivers in all classes, tracks, etc.

Dayle
 
Quite another way of saying something would be, gee, I wish we had as many cars as Spec Miata along with as good of racing as Spec Miata and then we would have our own race group. I underatand I don't own a production car, BUT, I ould convert it to F production real easy and be a drag for the F production class. :wink:
 
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