well i'm finally back after the grand-am cup races at watkin's glen and VIR. both weekends were, to say the least, interesting. not only were we running the grand-am cup protege at the glen, we were also debuting our grand-am AGT corvette. the vette ran flawlessly the entire weekend and, with the help of the high attrition rate, went on the finish second in class. the protege also ran well throughout most the weekend. since the big car was there, my poor little mazda was pretty much neglected until right before its race. 15 minutes before the car was due to be on track there was a mad rush to get new brakes put on the car. my co-driver started the race and immediately radioed in saything that the car had no stopping power whatsoever. he limped around for a little over an hour and then brought the car in and handed it over to me. i wasn't expecting the brakes to be good, but i wasn't expecting them to be that bad. the car seriously didn't stop at all. i eventually figured out how to drive the car but, by that point, my tires were severely flatspotted. i stupidly decided to stay out, and about 20 minutes from the checker, the left front tire blew which sent me into the guardrail. i limped back to the pits and ultimately finished the race, but just barely. it turns out that only the left front caliper was clamping and this is what caused the flatspotting. we took the car back to our shop in philly and thrahed for a couple of nights fixing brakes, bent suspension components, and hammering on body panels to get the car ready for VIR. i started the race in VIR and got the car up to third. we hit a caution about halfway through the race and we duck into the pits to refuel, change front tires, and do a driver change. the stop went well and when we went to fire the car back up after the fueling was done, it wouldn't start. the fuel pump gave out. our weekend was over. it was a busy couple of weeks and i wish we could have some better results to show, but that's racing.




this one is me coming back on the track after the tire blew.

 

i thought i'd include some pictures of the corvette as well...


my dad and his co-driver on the far right


if you squint real hard you can see my protege in the back!!




yeah i know...don't ask...at least i wasn't driving

 

those are lovely pictures! and the protege looks damn good. the glen is beautiful. must try to make it later this year...

ps, don't blame under-prepping as "that's racing"



[Modified by frank@b16a.com, 1:40 AM 7/6/2002]

 

yeah i know. i was pretty pissed about the whole ordeal. believe me, there was a quite interesting team meeting after that race.