That was a great way to make sure your pass stuck -- he seemed to back off a bit!

Ha! He did! He was odd.

I take it the car ran better and you had a good time?

It was great to be back at VIR with the big Intersport contingent! My last time at VIR was in 2008 and on Friday it was apparent that I had lost over a second in my lap times per year of absence. Saturday started off with a strange omen (pictured below). Thanks to Pat Roads for warning me of the "deposit" left behind my truck in the hotel parking lot. The Best Western must have a strange late night scene!

I put the omen behind me with some new tires for qualifying and found my lost 5 seconds. Ended up 1 of 3 in GTA1 and 6th in the red group race. My day went the way of the Omen when I broke the ring and pinion in lap 2 of the second sprint race. Thanks to Charlie and art for the paddock transmission drop and diagnosis.

Sunday was fun as Antonio was nice enough to let me co-drive the enduro with him. The highlight was spraying gas all over Omar's car in turn one from a loose gas cap.

Lots of track records and great driving by the group!


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See post #120. And report to the next Club Race, stat. Mid-Ohio anyone? New Jersey? Road America?

Should've put a ruler next to it for scale. That was a man and a half sized load!

Hunt, you had the entire front straight to get your harness hooked back up!

Great. Looks like you did it on purpose to open his eyes a bit...

A big shout out to Charlie Murphy at Intersport who was a huge help all weekend. Car adjustments, encouragement ( sort of ), driving tips, you name it. He was the man.

Huge thanks to the Intersport guys who let me hang out with them all weekend (and eat some of their food) and for their support working the fire bottle while I refueled during the enduro Sunday. Was also great to put a face with a name for those I hadn't really met before.

Friday was fairly disappointing as I was unable to beat my best times on RA1s despite being on hoosiers. However, at the end of the day Friday I discovered my issue... my tire pressure gauge. It was reading 25lbs when there was actually 36lbs. This means I had been setting my cold pressures at the hot pressures. This explains why I could hardly get the car to hook up all day. Also cracked a front rotor in the second practice.

Saturday with the tire pressures resolved I set a personal best in qualifying of 2:12.467. But it was only good enough for P3 in class to start the race. First race I ended up P2 behind Omar after Doug Crossman ended up having an issue with lap traffic in hog pen. Second race was a DNF after a spin in NASCAR. Brushed the tire wall, but no real damage. Bruised bumper, bent headlight ring trim, and broken turn signal. Headlight glass didn't even crack and the rest of the headlight parts looked fine.

Sunday enduro was rough. No cool suit and did probably a 55 min stint to start. Came in to refuel to a packed grid and had to wait. 11 min pit stop did me no favors in terms of maintaining P3. A handful of laps later I started to get a nice big shimmy from the rear. Felt like the weights were off or gone at first, but started to get worse. Limped around the last few laps to take the checker. When I went to put the street tires back on before going home, I noticed I was missing something. I appear to have snapped off a lug stud on the track.

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Seeing that I was just glad I made it back in one piece. The other lugs had started to loosen. Could've lose the whole wheel out there and that would've really sucked. Lesson learned, I should've pitted to check it out. Got lucky on this one.

My 2nd rookie race weekend made it obvious that I lacked the expericnce and track management to find space to both qualify and race against faster cars running slower laps times. Everyone seemed to be lowering lap times but mine increased while i was constantly trapped behind powerful cars for two days. :bang: I was frustrated and disappointed but had an absolute blast and loved every minute of it.

Huge thanks and appreciation to Charlie and Art from Intersport for helping me replace a broken axle, in less than an hour, to allow me to race in Sprint 2. Unreal! And David Dean for helping me a lot and feeding many!

Some fun stuff here chasing down Clark in both races while we're dealing with GTC4&5 and GTA1 cars that were hard to tough to shake and pass. I didn't have the power but luckily my brakes worked okay. :)

Yeah, my starts suck! But I was trying real hard to keep my cool so I could finish the weekend clean and get my license.

Sprint 1 - ends with a broken axle.

Sprint 2 - got hit again:grrr: Driver told the Scrut I hit him :shock: I was cleared thanks to video.

Congrats to all the Potomac guys that represented the region extremely well:cool: