The Pro-IT race was a fun one, it was great to see the top guys running together all race.
We had a BFA in the first group (Pro-IT) due to T&S issues (not many cars were getting "hits" on the loop) resulting in some scrambles to both resolve the technical error and to find bodies to run stopwatches -- I'd not run a stopwatch in T&S since 1986 and I was lost even with only doing two cars!). Fortunately, after the restart the technical glitches were pretty much resolved.
There was a fuster-cluck in T9/10 first lap of the Pro-IT race Saturday, leaving Wendell Holmes and Bill Fenton with damaged cars, and with Yiannis Tsiounis "sans" door skin the whole race (Yiannis has in-car video of the whole thing). Funny thing, Yiannis didn't know he was missing the door skin until his radio guy called him and told him!
We lost about 8 minutes to the subsequent clean-up of oil (all the way from entry into T9 to T11), paced by Yours Truly (I wanted to hold up the middle finger to signal one to go, but I figured the translation might get lost), and from there it was green to the end. Great race.
We in Scrutineering had very few issues, however it was still interesting since we had posted in advance at registration exactly what post-race items we were going to inspect for each class. This posting generated a LOT of interesting discussions and some inspections throughout the weekend (and yet we still snagged a few "discrepancies" post-race, each of them typically a simple misunderstanding or oversight of the regs). If you are a technically-oriented rules nerd-like personality, you would have enjoyed your time volunteering in tech (hint, hint!)
As Ben noted, four STU entries. Phil Parlato won with his sweet (fully self-built) World Challenge BMW, with Dave Maynard hounding him the for second; Dave was never more than a few car lengths behind the whole race. Ben dropped in a respectable third - there's some good potential in that car. Unfortunately, Maynard was excluded due to being significantly underweight; he mistakenly thought that STU also accepted Grand AM-prepped cars as well as World Challenge*.
As for the National racing, I was personally disappointed in the run group numbers. I was very surprised at the low counts, but I hear from others there that this is typical for a National weekend
. I think the FF/FV group had 7 cars...? Honestly, if it wasn't for the addition of the Pro-IT and "All Miata" run groups, that track had the potential for being a ghost town...
There were some good opportunities for STU track time for Improved Touring entries; two half-hour quallies and a 45-minute race, then add in there more racing on Saturday for Pro-IT (and a keerapload of more time if you drove a Miata; I think we figured Jerry Rigoli's SSB could have run 4 race groups; 5 if you count Prod...!) I'm bummed we weren't able to make it on the track, but I invite you all to join us for a few other Nationals, and come out to help at the track if you can't.
GA
* There's a lot of misunderstanding about the STU rules. STU is an "either/or" proposition: you can prep to the STU rules,
*OR* you can prep to the most-recent World Challenge rules for your car
*OR* you can prep to the Improved Touring rules
*OR* you can prep to the MX-5 Cup rules. You cannot mix-and-match these rules, but it's perfectly fine to cherry-pick which one is most advantageous for you.
In talking to Dave Maynard, I recognized that the mistake was assuming STU was like ITE, where you can prepare your car to *any* professional race series. Not the case. Unfortunately, his legal STU weight (which is based on engine displacement) is about 350 pounds more than his Grand Am weight, so it would take a lot of lead to make it STU legal...
However, I didn't think of this until during the drive home, but does anyone know if his BMW complies with the ITR specs? I don't know if his chassis is even eligible for ITR, but if it is I have to wonder if maybe the GA prep level is within ITR allowances? If I had thought of this post-race we could have discussed it to see if he could squeak through...
stay tuned
