October at Putnam Park – The Last Lap

The weather was great, the leaves were turning beautiful reds and yellows in central Indiana, the weekend was packed full of racing, but like all good things that must come to an end, this was the last race weekend of the season.

The ASR Racing team arrived in Plainfield Indiana on Friday afternoon for the Safety Technical Inspection and Race Registration. The format for this weekend is different than most weekends in that the first session on the track is a qualifying session, which will set the order for the first Sprint Race of the day. The finishing order of the first Sprint Race will set the order for the second Sprint Race of the day. The schedule is the same for Sunday.

We set the car up based on the notes from the May event that we ran there, but the cooler temperatures caused a slight “push” late in the qualifying session, so I did not qualify as well as I would have liked to. I was 3rd in class and 29th on the grid out of 39 drivers. The start of the race was very spread out and at one point toward the end of the front stretch the pack was four wide, a red Miata ran out of track, went off and nearly rolled. After the first lap, we settled into a battle with the #12 Porsche 944 driven by Greg Coward. Both cars are very equally prepared and it would boil down to who ever made less mistakes. We finished just behind the #12 in race one.

In race #2 it was like we just picked up where we left off in race #1. The 12 was just ahead of us and a couple of times I got a nose in on him, but just could not execute the pass. In the end we finished like we started, nose to tail.

On Sunday we qualified with a 1:28.172 unfortunately the #12 was able to shave seven one-hundreds of a second off our time and he qualified with a 1:28.165 so the order for race 1 would be the same as the day before.

At the start of the race, the 12 and I were nose to tail and just after turn 2, a blue Acura went off the track and re-entered the track at turn 3 and I was forced to break to avoid hitting him, which allowed a Miata and a CRX to pass and put about 5 car lengths between the 12 and us. I battled to get back around the CRX and the Miata, but by that time we started to have the GTS4 and 5 cars lapping us and so again we finished 2nd and 3rd in GTS1.

The start of Race 2 on Sunday was much tighter, and as the green flag dropped someone in the middle of the pack missed a shift and caused several cars to check up on the inside lane. I was in the outside lane and picked up five or six places on the number 12. Things settled out and we were leading a pack of two CRX’s, a Miata and the number 12 Porsche. At about the mid point of the race, I started to develop a “push” and was getting loose in turn 8 and the 9 – 10 combination. When the GTS4 cars lapped us at turn 8, I pushed wide and had to get off the throttle and the number 12 and one of he CRX’s were able to get by me and going into the turn 9 – 10 combination, a Miata tried to pass me on the outside. I held my line all the way through, but exiting turn 10, I dropped a tire off the tack and almost lost it allow him and the CRX to pass as well. At start / finish we got the white flag, I was able to re-pass the CRX by out-breaking him going into turn one, and battled the Miata all the way around. I got a nose in on him exiting turn seven, but just did not have a good enough run on him to make it stick. So I finished behind the Miata with the number 12 Porsche just ahead of him.

All in all, a great weekend of racing.