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The race is over and we won. Jim did a great job also moving up from a 36 place starting position to finish 18th. Peter qualified on the pole and spun the car and lost the lead temporarily in the middle of the race, but came back strong. Catching Archer at a rate of 1 second a lap, he was within 4 seconds with 10 laps to go when Archer, trying hard to stay ahead, made a mistake of his own, hitting a wall and knocking a valve stem out of a wheel. Bobby got a flat tire and headed for the pits. Peter took over the lead and won by 6 seconds over Reese Cox on the very tight street course. Dorsey Schroeder, driving a Saleen Mustang was third and John Heinricy driving a "factory" Corvette C5 was fourth. Starting from the pole, we lead almost all of the way. We won the start due to the very short distance from the start line to the first turn. Bobby Archer kept the pressure on for the first 20 laps and then, on lap 21, ...the mistake. But, luckily we dodged the bullet when Archer got the flat. There was one full course caution in the middle of the race and Archer got a second chance to win the drag race to turn one. He won... but on the outside, the Porsche's lighter weight and superior braking made the difference and we got to turn one ahead of him. The course was tight and bumpy and, by the end of the race was strewn with all kinds of body parts and car pieces. Jim dubbed one corner, which was very tight the "mirror graveyard corner." He said their were 5 mirrors laying on the track at the end of the race from cars brushing the wall. Grand Rapids version of the Darlington Stripe.
David Moore and the crew did a fabulous job and both cars ran almost flawlessly all weekend. We had a sticky throttle problem midway in the race, but it went away after the restart. I am sure they will have it fixed by the next weekend in Vancouver BC. We were very fortunate to escape the weekend without a scratch on either car.
We added new team members this weekend when Jonathan and Sandy Pierce
joined. Jon is our part time truck driver and Sandy just "came along" to
help everyone out. They were a terrific
Saturday PM
Qualifying Today. We won the pole on the last lap! Waiting
for an open track, we finally got it with one minute to go and managed
a lap that was 17 thousands of a second faster than Bobby Archer. The Hooters
Ladies visited us after qualifying for some photo ops. See Photos
1 for the results. More later. It will be a good and close race.
This is the tightest, narrowest course I have ever driven. A bit
like the narrow snowbanked lined tracks from Ice Racing Days. And the speeds
aren't much faster. Our top speed is about 122 mph down the main
straight. Hardly LeMans.