Another good weekend for the conversion crowd.
Barber... read about it, look at pictures of it and hear the stories. Then go there and be absolutely blown away. This has got to be the nicest track in the country folks. Why we had such a light turnout is beyond me. I had the pleasure of visiting the museum for the 1st time on Thursday and since we were the only visitors in the museum they allowed us to go into the basement and check out everything. 1.5 million dollar machine shop, (10?) real, operational F1 cars, Radical SR8 (which Mr Barber was driving around on Thursday to be sure the track was ready for us), SR3, Diasano, and on and on and on. Its like if you had unlimited funds and wanted to build the ultimate garage.
The weather was both perfect and horrible... Friday's test day was overcast and the high might have been 75- PERFECT. Then Sat the bottom fell out and poured for every race- I elected not to participate. Sunday was just like Friday- overcast and cool. I'd trade a day of racing for those two days of bliss any day of the week.
Also worth noting was the worker party which had the best spread of food I've seen in my racing experience. Carving station, open bar w/ wine, yada yada. Absolutely top notch.
I went out 1st secession Friday and scrubbed the wide tires anticipating a hot weekend. Beyond the scrub I got a chance to remember which way the track went... it was 04 when we were last allowed to run there. 2nd time out I was on the 6 & 8's which I stuck with for the remainder of the weekend. With low track temps I was concerned about keeping heat in the tires. I turned a 1.27ish and when I came back in told Jim that I was done for the day- I had two full days of racing ahead of me and I wanted to save the tires in the event I wanted to stick with the small ones- the wide tires needed to sit for the scrub to be effective. Anyway, in hindsight I wished I ran all of the remaining secessions since we missed Saturday.
The Stohr of Jeff Dingle was rented by Keith Roberts for Friday's test. Keith battled with the car all day. For some reason it wanted to run hot and was too stiff according to Keith. He said he was bouncing all over the place.
Saturday was very very wet. Jeff did a fantastic job in the Stohr with an over all victory (by a large margin) Mark Hathaway was the winning FC over Pete Hardholt (SP?) and that was a fun race to watch- it was tight! Pete challanged Mark several times but Mark was able to hold him off (without blocking, btw). Glen Cooper was also there with a 98+ Van Diemen but a broken input shaft and a busted r&p kept him out of the race.
Sunday I had pole and was able to lead from start to finish. Jeff hung in there for about 5 laps when he said he missed a couple shifts leaving the hairpin and it was all over- I was able to walk away.
I will post a video later of a couple laps.
So far this year the conversion is 7 for 7....