Race Report
One Little Mistake Fontucky. Also known as California Speedway, Fontana. I guess one could say I have a love/hate relationship with this track. I love the fact that we won our Super Gas Championship there with our semi-final round win last year in 2006. We went on to win that event, but I absolutely hated the venue. I think there were perhaps many factors in my feelings. The wind… Brutal is a good descriptive word. An unfriendly staff… Jerks is the operative word there. I realize they didn’t want to be there because they wanted to be the NHRA Finals in Pomona, but that’s no excuse to treat us poorly. Not getting paid on the spot for the win… Didn’t like that one little bit. It all seems rather trivial now. Water under the bridge. Bottom line, I didn’t want to come back. However, it was a PRA series race and as such Cindy reminded me that we needed to be there as we still had a shot at the Championship if things went our way. They did not. On this occasion however, the conditions were calm if just a little warm. Not unbearable. The event was extremely well attended and I congratulate the promoter Clyde Berg for a successful event, and the track staff was much more accommodating this time. Due to the way the pits are laid out, things were very tight even though there was plenty of room. It just seems everyone packed in tightly for some reason. It made it a challenge getting in and out of our pit spot. We managed though. A few oildowns early in the day delayed the program for a time, but once underway it went quickly. Our first qualifier run was aborted due to a missed shifted caused by the shifter bolts being loose. (I reckon I should have checked it, but it wasn’t loose before!). Anyway, it was an easy fix and we were good to go for qualifier number 2. I made the run really soft at an ET of 12.30 to be sure it would be on the positive side of the 11.90 index. Maybe too soft. I was worried that we wouldn’t get another shot and we might be on the outside of the field. Fortunately, round three of qualifying was indeed run, and we ran a nice safe 12.01 which put us in the middle of the field at the number 8 position according to our figuring based on Jaime Schuerger’s qualifying chart. Things got a little weird after that. As it turned out, the number 3 guy was illegal to run so his qualifying runs were tossed out. Another, who qualified near the bottom, hadn’t paid his fees, so his run was tossed. That left some of us scratching our heads about whether this is consistent with past procedures. I reckon it's as if they were not qualified at all. This moved us up to number seven, and allowed Steve Atkinson who was not qualified, back in at number 16. Anyway I was set to race Daniel Kurtzman, but due to the shuffling, I got paired with the always tough John Schuerger. John and I have gotten to be really good friends over the past few years, and one of the unfortunate aspects of racing in a tight knit class such as Super Gas is that we always race our friends. Can’t get around it. With a very slight starting line advantage, I threw it away by trying to take a small stripe and John squeeked by for the win. I hate it when I do that! Cory Sacchette went on to take the win that day, and with Rich Grise, the current points leader going to the semi-final round, we drop to number 10 overall and pretty much out of contention. I can probably come up with hundreds of lame excuses for being where we are, but the bottom line is that we just didn’t get the job done when it needed to be done. And it needed to get done at this event. So, we’ll go on to the last two events without the pressure of gathering points, have some fun and try to finish the year with a flourish… just like last year, and the year before! I love Las Vegas baby!
One Little Mistake Fontucky. Also known as California Speedway, Fontana. I guess one could say I have a love/hate relationship with this track. I love the fact that we won our Super Gas Championship there with our semi-final round win last year in 2006. We went on to win that event, but I absolutely hated the venue. I think there were perhaps many factors in my feelings. The wind… Brutal is a good descriptive word. An unfriendly staff… Jerks is the operative word there. I realize they didn’t want to be there because they wanted to be the NHRA Finals in Pomona, but that’s no excuse to treat us poorly. Not getting paid on the spot for the win… Didn’t like that one little bit. It all seems rather trivial now. Water under the bridge. Bottom line, I didn’t want to come back. However, it was a PRA series race and as such Cindy reminded me that we needed to be there as we still had a shot at the Championship if things went our way. They did not. On this occasion however, the conditions were calm if just a little warm. Not unbearable. The event was extremely well attended and I congratulate the promoter Clyde Berg for a successful event, and the track staff was much more accommodating this time. Due to the way the pits are laid out, things were very tight even though there was plenty of room. It just seems everyone packed in tightly for some reason. It made it a challenge getting in and out of our pit spot. We managed though. A few oildowns early in the day delayed the program for a time, but once underway it went quickly. Our first qualifier run was aborted due to a missed shifted caused by the shifter bolts being loose. (I reckon I should have checked it, but it wasn’t loose before!). Anyway, it was an easy fix and we were good to go for qualifier number 2. I made the run really soft at an ET of 12.30 to be sure it would be on the positive side of the 11.90 index. Maybe too soft. I was worried that we wouldn’t get another shot and we might be on the outside of the field. Fortunately, round three of qualifying was indeed run, and we ran a nice safe 12.01 which put us in the middle of the field at the number 8 position according to our figuring based on Jaime Schuerger’s qualifying chart. Things got a little weird after that. As it turned out, the number 3 guy was illegal to run so his qualifying runs were tossed out. Another, who qualified near the bottom, hadn’t paid his fees, so his run was tossed. That left some of us scratching our heads about whether this is consistent with past procedures. I reckon it's as if they were not qualified at all. This moved us up to number seven, and allowed Steve Atkinson who was not qualified, back in at number 16. Anyway I was set to race Daniel Kurtzman, but due to the shuffling, I got paired with the always tough John Schuerger. John and I have gotten to be really good friends over the past few years, and one of the unfortunate aspects of racing in a tight knit class such as Super Gas is that we always race our friends. Can’t get around it. With a very slight starting line advantage, I threw it away by trying to take a small stripe and John squeeked by for the win. I hate it when I do that! Cory Sacchette went on to take the win that day, and with Rich Grise, the current points leader going to the semi-final round, we drop to number 10 overall and pretty much out of contention. I can probably come up with hundreds of lame excuses for being where we are, but the bottom line is that we just didn’t get the job done when it needed to be done. And it needed to get done at this event. So, we’ll go on to the last two events without the pressure of gathering points, have some fun and try to finish the year with a flourish… just like last year, and the year before! I love Las Vegas baby!