ITACivic

A few pics from the West Coast Honda Challenge Norcal race at Thunder Hill

http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/greg_umba...NorCal&.view=t

http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/greg_umba...NorCal&.view=t

Austin

Thanks for the link...too bad I had too many other personal things to take care of instead of taking a trip up there.

Austin

bulldog_RS20

Thanks Greg...

Can you give us a recap of the weekend?

Hooch'n

pics=

ITACivic

I was slow they were fast. Nothing new in that department.


The NorCal race weekend started off at 4AM for me and my crew buddy Herman. We made the trip from San Jose to ThunderHill in 3 hours. Mike Quan was there all set up with the Cobalt contingency and Toyo Tyres banners. We had about 6 Honda Challenge entries and 4 of them were USTCC racers. It was great (sorta) to have another H5 car to battle with. I missed the 8AM practice session. I could have used that seat time. When it came time to race, everyone just pulled away. The other H5 car just pulled away also. Tyson commented on how rusty I looked out there. Oh well it is the only the first round.

We had a couple of drivers come by and inquire about H1. Looks like the NorCal fields are gonna grow by the next round.

On saturday we had no incidents or DNS/DNF for H5. It was a nice day at THIll, the weather was mild and the sun was out.

Mike can chime in and give a Sunday recapp.

Tyson

from my perspective up top turn 1 of saturdays race, the race pretty much was settled after lap 1, since there only a small handful of cars amidst a large field anyway. tom leppers white b18c6 Fosstech integra took pole with Lang's prelude right behind. they had an exciting start around turn 1 thru 3 where lang took the lead. you can kinda see that sequence in the pics (all the group shots were of lap 1). behind them in turn 3, mike quans yellow/black civic, im not sure the name of his friend who was driving it saturday, spun out and luckily avoided any mishap, but had to wait til the end of the spec miatas to swing by til he got back on track. later in the race the blue 2nd gen integra (with a b16 swap i believe) seemed to catch up with the other white integra (with blue top banner) driven by a gentleman named clyde which i ferget his last name. not sure if a pass was ever made. meanwhile, yellow/black civic made way through the rest of the field and caught up to the HC pack and found the black EF ITA spec-ed civic owned by michael brunelle but driven by albert butterfield. right on the last lap, the yellow civic finally got in position to pass around turn 5, and right as they went down the hill out of my viewing sight, i see the yellow flag go up, so there apparently was some off roading by both of them. im not sure on the rest of the details, but the black ef got out first. and that was pretty much the race. lepper ended up winning H1, since the prelude was still classed in H2 and of course won that as well.

that was pretty much the race. the field was definately more entertaining seeing the other groups of spec miatas, rx7's, factory 5s and even 3 nascar-type cars compete and interact with each other in the same race. one of the spec miatas even spun out right at turn 1 and narrowly missed any incident, reminded me of my spin out there...

yeah, id like to hear of sundays race as well.

civicrr

Sun. race had the 5 HC cars in the top six postions in our group. The start was a split rolling one again with the cars in two rows. Ward Rose (Blue G2 H1 Integra & I (me following him) almost got a awesome holeshot but the flag didn't officially wave so we had to slam on the brakes & fall back into line. I wish I could tell you more about the race but it pretty much went like this. The faster H1 (3) & H2 HC cars pulled away hard stringing out the pack. I didn't position myself well & lost a couple of spots by T5. While I did well compared to the others in race Group A, the other HC guys were just much faster than me. Never saw them again until we were back in the paddock. The only eventful thing for me was a Spec Miata spinning out in T14 on the last lap. He got pointed the right way & pulled out to the exit curbing on T15 instead of staying inside. In otherwords, he got right back on line before he was carrying any speed. Of course, this happened right as I was racing by. I ended up going four off track left & passing him in the dirt. No contact made!

Lepper (H1) & Lang (H2) ended up taking 1st & 2nd overall! Finish in H1 = Lepper, Rose, LLewelyn. H2 = Lang. H4=Team RNR (Driver M. Quan)