Roebling Road Race Recap

Very late posting, good thing don't have a following that reads this with frequency!

This was by far the best weekend race experience that we have ever had. We is Scott and I as Brian spent another weekend at home clipping coupons for canned food from the paper so he could eat...... And Al actually washed his car, at the track no less.

Aside from the normal two races we run, Factory 3 Performance sponsored an IFU Race (Inverted Field Unlimited). We took the quali times from Sat. and inverted the field. Good times ensued but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The weekend started on Friday with a LONG haul down to Roebling. On the way I managed to loose both my trailer license plate and a trailer brake light. Who knew towing at 100+MPH would do that? After arriving later than planned I set up camp (literally) and unloaded the car in the dark and without cranking it due to Roebling's draconian rules.



At this point in the season I was simply hoping that the motor would hold together long enough to finish the weekend and not explode on track. I set out for my first session on the track in two years and was surprisingly on pace for the mid-pack. I qualified 13th of 22 with Scott posting a nice 19th of 22. I was well ahead of Robinson but shocked to be so far behind Geeger (6th???) Fortunately both would graciously drive off track to help me move up.

I finished the first race 8th ahead of some truly talented driver, and also Geeger and Robinson. It should be noted that both Geeger and Jim practiced all day on Friday while I was towing down..... Scott was able to maintain a clean race and finished in 18th.

After every other race had ended on Sat. the main event was started, the Spec E30 IFU Race. Everyone at the track was there to watch us. I started in 13th and Scott got to start in 4th! Outside second row. This race was absolutely incredible. There was very little time when you weren't involved in some sort of battle with two or three cars. Scott later said that it was like a year's worth of racing experience in 45 minutes. Invaluable to rookies like us.

I had worked my way up to 4th!!!! before I saw a double yellow fly to remove poor Laura from the dirt berm. Oddly, they had us stop single file on the front stretch. Little did we know that they were going to invert us for a second time, madness. I was heart broken as that forth would have been my best race of the year. So, as we restarted I was forth from last, 19th. By the time the dust had settled I crossed the line three wide to finish 8th. I lost out to 6th and 7th by a bumper. Scott crossed the line in a great 15th with a new found aggressiveness that was lacking before.

The night was spent swilling beers to drown the red dogs and mini bike fumes and listing to lies from Travis about how crappy his car is leaving only his talent to blame for his great race. Lame.

Here is the video. Its long and the sound is turned off due to technical difficulties, but it is still exciting to watch:

IFU Video

The Sunday race had me a little worried because the car was acting up a good bit. The alignment, or lack thereof, was making the car very nervous through T3, a very high speed left hander. Also, I was fouling spark plugs every two sessions due to my crapbox motor's dying rings. Last race of the year, oh well.

I quailied 9th. Two spots better than Sat. but Robinson was right on my heels. Lame. Scott qualied 20th obviously hungover on a great IFU race and maybe some beer.

This race didn't do to much for me other than to reinforce the fact that my motor was done. I would get pulled by everyone down the straights. The video really shows this. An early spin in front of the entire field by Damion left the whole field mixed up. I was up to forth when we all came back on track. Feeling out of place I decided to drive straight off in T9. This put me back in a much more familiar 7th. Fortunately for me Robinson and Geeger were kind enough to realize that I had much more talent than themselves and drove their cars off as well. Good job guys!

I followed Patton for the rest of the race and finished 6th, or so I thought. The pink panther car was found to be under weight and was DQ'd. Preesh fellas. I finished 5th and even squeaked some Toyo bucks out of it. Scott however had the race of the day. He went from 20th to finish 13th. His best race of the year.

Sunday Sprint

It was a great end to a wonderful Rookie year. I really hope B. Jones gets to join us for some races next year.