Race 1

April 3rd, 2005
Due to inclement weather on Saturday, all races were cancelled. Sunday we arrived at the track to find a fresh coating of about 6 inches of snow and 31 degree temperatures. The Mid-Ohio officials had three snow plows on the track and with the help of about sixty or seventy support vehicles and tow vehicles, and the sun, we were able to get the snow removed and by noon the track was actually dry enough so send out some HPDE classes. At the drivers meeting, the race scheduled was modified and reduced from three run groups to two, due to that fact that many drivers had packed up and left earlier in the day. The decision was made to place the GTS cars in the Big Bore run group. We would have a split start and the GTS cars would be in the second pack.

Qualifying took place at about 1:30 PM, since there is a requirement that for a person’s first race, they must start at the back of the pack, getting a strong qualifying order would not be a major factor for me. I did go out in the qualifying session to check the track conditions and get some heat in the tires. The track was in remarkably good condition, but there were a few places that were wet from the piles of snow melting and running onto the track. Qualifying went fine, but again, I would be at the back of the grid anyway so I did not get a qualifying time.

Because of the weather uncertainty, many of the regular workers left early and when the weather broke and we went back to racing, we were left with a skeleton crew of workers. The grid for the Big Bore race was somewhat chaotic and in disarray, but we eventually got on the tack to find in the parade lap that the snow had really started to melt off and the track had considerable water running across it in many places. After a “wave off” on the first lap, we took the green on the second attempt. In the first lap, the leaders tried to go through turn one three wide and the inside car went up on the rumble strip, or should I say the snow drift between turn one and pit out, and scattered snow across the entire track surface in turn one. Well, that made for not only a wet surface but an extremely slippery one as well. There was a “stream” of water literally flowing across the track heading up to the keyhole, most of the way down the backstretch. From turn seven, over Madness, under the first bridge and up to the entrance to Thunder Valley, the track was very wet. But as the field started to settle out, I started to race with the number 21 Porsche 944 of Dan Davis. We spent several laps in very close competition and I had several runs on him into the corners, but in the end gave way due to the conditions in the turns. Not wanting to have an “incident” that would have jeopardized my provisional license, I settled for seventh place in GTS 1. After all this was just my first race! Best lap time was 2:17.338 in lap 5, average miles per hour was 51.115.