Great weekend with 944's coming from Nevada, SoCal and AZ, almost like a mini nationals including several first timers with NASA.
Friday's practice day at Chuckwalla (CVR) was just that, a CVR practice day, JivanJim Hicks took advantage of the day to sharpen his driving skills on this 2.68 mile course driving it clockwise which the general census feels that it is a bit more challenging in that direction. I went out a couple of times to heat cycle tires and bed in some new Hawk Blue brakes. John Niedernhofer joined in for a half day of practice. The biggest battle of Friday was me and Jim Hicks holding off what seemed to be a few hundred racers, from parking in our very own reserved 944spec parking area that we earned by having the largest race group of the weekend, expecting 18, 944spec drivers with 17 racecars to show up. We had 2 in comp school and another new racer coming out without his car because of Dr's orders from a recent surgery. 944spec is alive and well!Friday evening was the usual camaraderie with good food, drinks and desserts.
Saturday morning with NASA-AZ starts off with a 7:30am drivers meeting and by 8:20am small bore along with big bore are out for warm up, that is a busy time on track and with our 944 cars, a good time to start using your mirrors if you don't already. Around 11:05am was small bore qualifying which had really close times for pole. I just squeezed in a fast lap of 02:06.214 followed by Jim Hicks with a 02:06.330, qualifying order was Chuck Sharp, Darren Griffith, Jeff Wojnar, Simon Peck, Jim Richmond, John Niedernhofer, Dave Hauck, Mary Riddel, Ian McIntyre. We had a looooong break until our 3:15pm race time and with the temps being in the mid 80's brought out the cool shirts.
3:15pm Race time! Since standing starts are not a good idea in our old cars, I wanted to try a 1st gear 3K rpm start which got several compliments from the spectators, there are many videos showing both Saturday and Sunday's races, go to 944spec.org under SoCal and look for
"Chuckwalla 2015 opener"
green green green, Jim Hicks made it to T1 a good bit earlier than me and left me and the field sitting like a turtle in a rabbit race. Fortunately for me and Darren Griffith, not so much for Jim there was a full course yellow that got us bunched back up for a green/white finish, poor Jim just picked the wrong lane to go into like you sometime do in a grocery store, Darren Griffith along with myself got by Jim to finish with me in first, Darren Second and Jim in 3rd, really sux for Jim after being so far ahead that I couldn't even see him for most of the race, however what should make Jivanjim feel much better is he got my old track record with a very impressive race time of 02:06.239. The rest of the field finished as follows, Chuck, Simon, John, Dave, Jim R, Mary, Ian and Rob.
Saturday evening was the usual delicious BBQ which was part of the race weekend package, however most of our group cooked in while sitting around solving the worlds problems except for Simon and Dave who spent the evening replacing a transmission for one of our newbies in comp school, Jerry De Lira so that he could complete comp school on Sunday in his own car. Huge thank you to those two guys and everyone else that pitched in to make it happen.
Sunday morning was pretty much the same as Saturday's just a day later with an all race group warm up. Qualifying at 10:35am starring Jim Hicks killing it with a 02:06.177 for pole position! Sooo, there is not better time for an inverted start, all of that hard work put in by Jivanjim just to go to the back, but not the very back as AZ's very own Darren Griffith didn't make it to the driver's meeting so he actually got to be last, last, which obviously didn't matter since he won the race. There are some really good video's of that race that words won't or can't describe as well as just watching it, this was pretty much a battle from green to checker. But it was too bad for Jim H again, that he gets the lead and is in another zip code and boom, here comes yet another double yellow to bunch us up and Darren got the lead with Jim H in Second place followed by me, Chuck, Simon, Jim R, John, Ian, Mary and Dave.
After the race there were no problems in impound, it's 4pm and everyone is making a dash for getting loaded for their drives home.
Over all an A+ for great fun and racing! Thanks to everyone of you that made the trek, whether it was 944spec, comp school or 944spectator.
Looking forward to more weekends like this one and getting to know our newbies better.
Norm #99
