Sportsfans,
On the spur of the moment Mrs Frog and I up and decided to drive the GR86 up to Road Atlanta and visit many of our old friends. We heard that Tim Minor was wandering down from Virginia, and the Aiken family had crossed over to the dark side and bought a new FE2 for Porter to play with, so we loaded up and drove north Saturday morning through a fierce rain storm for a bit.
We missed Saturday's FC race. We heard that right before the race it started raining. All the field switched to rain tires, except Minor 88. Turns out Minor discovered his rain tire were a lot smaller in diameter than his dry tires and he couldn't drive the Citation with the floor rubbing the pavement, so in an act of foolery or bravery he went out on drys. Dixon won Saturday in his Citation, and Minor finished undamaged.
Sunday dawned bright and chilly. A wonderful Road Atlanta day. The group FC raced in went out at noon. The group contained FA, P1, P2, FX, FC, FE2, and maybe four other classes I can't remember this morning. Lap one, the field all got through T1. OK. Same with lap 2. In Lap 2 Minor clicked off a 1:25 in the FC lead with Dixon in pursuit. Then the carnage began. And we had another un-interesting parade of the remaining cars driving around behind the pace car, each restart only lasting a hot lap. There might have been one green lap to the checked flag as the race ended because of expired time on the clock. Ho Hum, yawn.
Unfortunately the biggest tussle took out Matt McDonough's Radon in a major way. No love for mixed class racing. When the leaders are already mixed into the back-markers for a restart, things happen, usually not pretty things.
Minor took the win. Dixon fell back after getting clipped feeling like something was amiss at the rear of his car. Hartley MacDonald was second, and Eric Presbrey was third.
The fields were large last weekend. But, some run groups were made up of many classes, so some classes had only one car. Both paddocks were very full. Some take-aways: OMG in GT1 there now are Lamborginis, and McLarens. SM still severely damages a few cars. The FE2 fields are large, as are SFR. Road Atlanta is still the great racing surface I have come to know and love, but the surrounding area has been developed beyond any vision we might have had in 1970.
It was great to see old friends like Steve Davis and James Lee. We decided to avoid Hotlanta traffic coming home, so we carved back roads south from the track for a enjoyable scenic drive through the likes of Winder and Social Circle, not popping out onto the super slab until we were near Macon. Good times.