Not usually a thread starter by nature but I want to throw my slant on it.

Friday night: Meeting Giles, Karl, Dave Junkins and happy suprise Jonny-boy Starnes at the paddock to save some (ha! a ton of) space for the OPM gang bringing the big rig. Get there early and hang out with John Whitaker and Chris Brinson and meet RStoR (?) (if you had to pick a couple of guys to hang out with, John and Chris would be the ones). Scott gets in and we do some preliminary mark off for OPM with tape and go walk the track with James Evans and Richard Floyd. Ok so that burns up calves, ankles and an hour (Jiminy Crickets, walking even the apron hurt my ankles). So as we're halfway done (exiting T5, we see Starnesy walking into T1 - cool, "the gangs mostly here"). So somewhere around dark-o'clock we get back to the paddock and meet up w/ Starnes and Shultz (Giles, Starnes, Shultz are crashing here so we were ready to get outta there). Of-course at this point, everyone is ready to get their beer on (and my wimpy *** needs to get his diet coke on). Come back here, watch some LMS tape and crash not before which we learn much about "your mom" and other assorted humorous episodes.

Saturday: way too freeking early for me, we head outta here for Lowes. Get to the track about 9:30 or so. There's lots to be said about blocking off space for OPM but I shan't go there now (bottom line, we; Starnes, me, Giles, Shultz, Junkins end up paddocked with some loud V8s, NOT OPM). Somewhere around 2:00 or so we go out for practice and there were a lot of excited yet scared looking faces taking off helmets in the immediate paddock. Qualifying is nothing notable (I don't think). The race start, which we thought would be twilight ended up being pretty much dark. First lap - and I'll be the first to say, it was UNBELIEVABLY tough to see anyone behind and ESPECIALLY beside you - there was some contact in T3a. Starnes was outside of this and I was right behind it (meaning nearby but not involved). From there, Jon and I ran several laps together and I thought I could challenge him (ha! he got his schwerve on a few laps later and showed my *** the door ). I think it was on the third lap, a big ruckus in T5 (all I saw was a stream of smoke and some dust - nothing abnormal on the dust ). Exiting T5, I see Warren off track left and Fowler streaming a lot of smoke out of the right rear. The smoke goes away but entering N3/4, its a farking cloud and Tom heads into the pits. Soon after this (maybe a lap) there is a car off in T5 grass. A lap later there is a car off past that car (kinda behind the tire wall) and the flashing yellow lights come on (might not be exactly right on the chronology but it was something like that). Now here (honestly I don't think I was alone) was where I got confused - David Rhodes and I are trying to catch the next pack up (I think it was Williams, Franza, Starnes, Brinson, Giles and Meridith in no particular order) and the lights go out. Well, David and I were both on the back straight in 5th gear cruising (I thought we'd EITHER get a 1 to go OR a pace car for a FCY but I understand I am mistaken on this) - and I mean cruising - shoot, I've got my hand in the window trying to scoop air in and David is probably doing something similar cause when we both clue in that we're green and punch it at 80mph in 5th, we BOTH go freaking nowhere fast Ok, so onto the front straight and it IS ON. David takes the inside into T1 and for the rest of the race we are nose to tail and it was EFFIN' intense and it was ABSOLUTELY CLEAN AS **** W2W racing. Now granted, we BOTH on our own almost collected an H5 Trophy TWICE but that, in the end, was inconsequential. To put it bluntly, I know for a fact I can hold my breath from T1 entry to T5 exit - bad, bad, bad I know but I didn't think I had time to breathe . The only word I have for our dice was ******* INTENSE AS **** (for me, probably a walk in the park for David). As I tried to figure out a way for the entire white flag lap to make a pass with NO turns left (cause I knew he'd get by me if I did it one turn to early) I banked on the exit of Nascar 4. I honestly thought I had him, I tracked out a few feet more and cut across the inside of the kink and I *think* I came real close to putting two off through the grass there. In the end, I could only get up to his rear bumper and in all honesty, I really felt like I made a good showing for myself for that. Now as for my spin after the checkered, lets just say I spent a few moments too many contemplating my effort and wondering why that car is pointed at me in T1 Now for the record: David R. and I raced in (what I consider) some very tight configurations for the duration and I even remarked to myself at one point "what are these ******* people talking about?" cause this stuff was real real real clean and I mean there wasn't anything I'd even consider remotely unclean nor could I even dream of how to concoct a story of how it was unclean.

Saturday night: We finally get the troops all lined up and are heading back to my house for some late night grub and Trevor (OPM mech.) gets stopped leaving. They are convinced he was the white Accord doing burnouts (which I can attest is not humanly possible and I heard they checked the plates and confirmed this). So we get here at about 11:15 or so and I think we get our grub on around 1:00 - yeah, it was a late night.

Sunday: Still arriving too early for me I think the schedule is a bit off and they use our practice slot for our qualifying. I believe Corey had to get a coolant part and unfortunately had to forgo qualifying. David Junkins (Junktech) and I go out together and meet up with James Evans a couple of laps in. Giles in the meantime was thinking of doing a cool down and then get back into it and saw the CRX Train and let us go by to play (thanks big time Scott). I think we stayed out three or four more laps and I realized I had very little for James out there. BTW, congratulations on the H4 Class Championship James!!!

Sunday race: All I know is that Corey schooled the hell out of half the field by T1 - our boy started at the back of the pack and I (who started 10th) followed him into T1 Nice effin' start dood! I really don't know much else that was going on during the race as Blake, Chris B and I pretty much stayed on the same section of track for the last 10 laps. James dropped out on lap 3 (don't know what happened) and I was dropping about one to two seconds a lap to the Professor (Tom - name curteousy of Hracer I believe) every lap (he must have backed out of it after a while since I only finished 16 seconds behind him - maybe he coasted the back straight a couple times). From what I gather, Chris D. and Richard had an awesome fight for H5 with Richard winning the day (they had a good bout on Saturday too where Chris came away w/ that one). Sorry, I have run out of details and other rememberances. This holds a special interest to me as Chris D., Richard and I did our comp school together and as Tom F. predicted, he could put us where ever he wanted on the grid and somehow by hook or by crook, we'd end up in a three way dice w/ each other - some ITA thing I guess. The school was the first we met each other and I have considered them friends ever since. I think we three know how to have some fun on track

Peace out yo and to da muddy tizzybop.

Adam

 

Awesome write-up Adam. From a spectator stand point, the night racing was simply amazing, hard to describe it. And its even cooler when you know a lot of the people out there racing in a real race series

Brian

 

Yep, Adam summed everything up. It was pretty fun...well if you call getting hit, breaking some more stuff and racing anyway can be called fun. There's nothing like going through NASCAR T3 with the rearend stepping out and drifting through the turn. Hey Franza...how close to the tire wall did I come? The times on Sunday's race (Adam - correct me if I'm wrong) was something like:
1st - Jack 1:26.2
2nd - Todd 1:26.6
3rd - Corey 1:26.5
4th - Jason 1:26.6
5th - Starnes 1:26.9

 

That was awesome stuff, Jon. It was VERY frightening to watch, and like I said, I really thought you HAD made contact at the time. Awesome recovery, and awesome race!!!

 

Nice job out there Adam! You guys were hauling butt!

 

Jon-

From Adam's post in another thread:

All: Here's the results from Sunday's race...

H1* Jack Harris 1:26.582 Lap 14
H2* Corey Jacobs 1:26.722 4.683
H1 Todd Reid 1:26.465 4.843
H2 Jason Franza 1:26.604 9.5
H2 Jon Starnes 1:26.906 11.195
H4* Tom Fowler 1:27.225 23.275
H3* Chris Brinson 1:28.091 38.587
H4 Adam Richman 129.326 39.819
H2 Robert Williams 1:28.832 45.211
H1 Blake Meridith 1:29.898 45.595
H3 Karl Shultz 1:30.552 1:06.363
H4 Michael Stoiber 1:30.544 1:08.779
H5* Richard Floyd 1:31.647 1:19.060
H5 Chris Degioanni 1:30.720 1:23.371
H1 Chad Slagg 1:32.528 Lap 13
H5 John Whitaker 1:37.502 1:23.390
H4 David Junkins 1:30.333 Lap 8
H4 James Evans 1:28.328 Lap 3
H3 Scott Giles 1:28.123 00:00.704

* denotes class winners

 

Jason and Adam -> Ahhh! Many thanks!!!

 

Nice times!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Looked fun in the draft....

 

Well, I looked at the video of the race on Sunday (only where I was about to smack the tire barrier) and...well...I'm speechless...I need to put a sign on my car that says "GOD is my co-pilot". Jason - you're Correct, it does look like I hit the tire barrier. I'll watch the rest of it tonight....

Edit: Spelling correction


[Modified by J28S, 11:52 AM 9/9/2002]

 

I want a copy, Jon

 

Oh yeah...just wanted to make a public thanks to Matt, Jack and ? (I'm really bad with name) for fixing my car Saturday as well as Corey and Warren for the tools and parts. Thanks again!!!

Jason - will do!

 

Nice!

 

The whole reason why everything got screwed up Sunday with the timing was because LMS had failed to provide an ambulance and fire truck by the correct time. We ended up starting an hour and 15 minutes later than the original time, which as the day progressed, got worse and worse. The SCCS race itself was 50 minutes long, and to top it off, all had to pit again, and engines shut to recover a crashed car.

David Teague (announcer) lost the PA system during Small Bore and had to run down from the control tower where we were (top of LMS, down the stands, across the track, to the tech area in the Winston Cup garages to do some fiddling around, just so he could get the microphone working again, and to announce you guys's race. I know when they had give the five minute warning, he hadn't yet been able to make an announcement, and probably 30 seconds later was the first chance he was able to do it.

 

The Only Schecdule Change of the day on Sunday was instesad of H-C doing partace wual, race NASA was informed by the H-C Guys that they would like to do, Qulaify then Race. The SCCS Race Started @ 1:00 as was off course @ 2:05 the race was time to 50 mins, we ended up only being by my best guess timate, about 1:30 mins off, of course we gained some times since the H-C Guys to do one less session. Of course if the Lowes Security had not told the EMS guys that then didn't need to be back until noon, we would have only been 15mins behind on Tuesday.

 

Oh yeah...did I say I finished not One, but Two races...and it didn't break down...well...I drove it anyway!!!

 

The reason the SCCS race was receheduled earlier was so that Chris Economacki could say "Gentlemen start your engines".

He was on a tight schedule.

If you don't know who Chris Economacki is, shame shame...

Grumpy

 

Got video of this, as well as your speech before hand, invocation, star spangled banner, etc...

 

Who is that?

 

young'n

 

Once upon a time, in the olden days before Speedvision, cell phones and computers, when people had only 1 TV in the house and it MIGHT have been color, there was a program on ABC on Sunday called Wide World of Sports. Races usually consisted of Winston Cup races with people with names like Richard Petty, A.J Foyt to name a few, were racing and Chris was an announcer. One of the best I might say.

Oh that's the days of Mustangs, Camaros, Firebirds, Daytona, Monte Carlo, rear wheel drive and lotsa HP.

Yeah=======

 

I have to say that I was up in Timing and Scoring for all afternoon on Saturday, and most of Sunday and I had a ball watching the races. It was awesome to actually see the whole track and all the action. I just missed having an instant replay camera for those incidents I didn't see.

You all put on a great show. Having the OPM guys out there and NOT runnning away with the race will really impressive also. Syas a lot for HOME GROWN!!!

I also want to personally thank Theresa - David's wife who stuck it out in T&S and whose help went beyond the realm of "required". Without her keen eyes, quick fingers and general pleasantness, you might still be waiting for some results and the software was not behaiving properly.

I know this weekend was rough all the way around and really appreciate all the patience and cooperation everyone gave to help get things under way.

You are all great drivers and a pleasure to know.....

Elyse

 

Nobody going to mention Jack's spin and run from behind to win the overall in the saturday race?

I know it happened, because I have it on [crappy] video
http://linus.highpoint.edu/~hleach/L...s/MVC-003V.MPG

 

I saw him walking around the paddock, but wasnt sure it was him, and was a bit nervous to go up to a stranger and ask if they were Chris Economacki. But once I heard them announce him to say "the most famous" words in racing, I started kicking myself for not going up and meeting him . None the less, it put a smile on my face seeing someone like him walking around and checking out the Honda Challenge cars (as well as the other series cars)

Brian
-22 but knows who Chris Economacki is

 

Adam, nice write up. And congrats on a fine run (from the results posted later). Hated to miss it but other priorities called.

D Rhodes is indeed a fine and now clean racer. Early in his career in SCCA he had a reputation of using other cars to help his trurn in but that got cleaned up years ago. People that complain about him either don't know him or are just surpirsed by some of the passes he makes (i.e. THEY never thought someone would pass them there and are pissed that he did.....). He is a fine road racer and as far as I know ( I haven't personally raced with him on track) a clean racer. Sounds like he too put on quite the show.

C ya at VIR

Ron

 

Excellent writeup Adam - and thanks again for the hospitality. I hope to return the "favour" someday. As usual, the best part was hanging out and sharing this ridiculous hobby with good friends. And meeting new friends.

My weekend was, at best, a mixed bag. My inconsistency and general lack of confidence really smacked me in the face at LMS, where I spent much of my time fighting off H4 and H5 cars By the end of Sunday's qualifying I was all set to pack up, skip the race, and go the hell home. Thanks to all of you (Blake, Scott, Adam, Diane, Starnes, and countless others) who talked me into staying for the race. I did end up reaching some milestones in that race so despite finishing poorly, it was worthwhile.

I've got some work to do, and it's not on the car. I plan to have it done by VIR.

--Rice, who has to remind himself that the worst day at the track is lots better than a good day at work...