Racing at Sears Point

The west coast chapter of NASA kicked off their inaugural FFR Challenge Series at Sears Point. Thanks to their generosity, we joined them for their races after we did the AIIM Conference in San Francisco. With support from Factory Five, Advanstar, and eVisory, we pulled into Sears Point only to discover that the track is in the midst of some serious renovations.

With all the new pavement being poured in anticipation of a NASCAR race, NASA elected to run a shortened course. Part of the course would be parts the local knew while a few parts would be run backwards. The forecast called for rain, but the skies were nice and clear. The track had fresh asphault and lots of dirt, but at least it would be dry.

Qualifying turned out to be a joke. The tire pressures were wrong and so were out weights due to several mistakes (all mine). Harry and I both drove the car which felt like it was on marbles. We qualified 30 out of 32. The top Cobra, Dave Borden, qualified third. Worse, I only got about 7 laps and two of those were under caution meaning that I had about 6 minutes trying to drive the car around this track that I had never seen.

We discovered our problems and made some educated guesses about the setup. I was basically going to go race and learn my way around as I went. The start came and I began picking off cars and moving up, but catching Dave Borden seemed like a long shot. When a wreck caused a stop in the race, it meant we were just going to get one or two laps. Catching Dave wasn't going to happen in this race. Some 14 year old hit me in his beat-up RX-7 on the second to last lap. I wasn't happy. He wasn't alone though - all of those RX-7s were out there playing smash-up derby with little regard to other people's cars. Hats off to a woman named Carol who drove her Ferrari Modina in the race with all of those guys.

After the dust settled, I ended up with second place in the first FFR Challenge race on the west coast.

Bud Porter-Roth, my old business partner and long time friend, came out with his daughter Lizzie to watch the races. They helped with some of the crew duties and took pictures. On Sunday, Harold Heigho came out and helped some too.

On Sunday morning we woke up to a light drizzle. On the way to the track it began to just pour. Sunday qualifying was going to be done on a fresh track with standing water. After the demolition derby with the RX-7s, I wasn't sure I even wanted to go out. In the end I decided to do one lap just that I would have a qualifying time. The car just floated on various parts of the race track and I couldn't use any throttle. I did my one lap and came in. I would start second behind Dan Lawson. At this point I had a whopping 15 minutes of track time.

About 25 minutes before the race it finally stopped raining! As we started the race I got a nice jump at the start and led for a few laps. Then Dave Borden and I swapped the lead back and forth. I was in front when a yellow flag caused us to slow down. He caught up to me and I held him off for several laps until I got caught in traffic (Dave did a nice job forcing me into the traffic). I think we each passed each other again before I got hit twice by another crazy RX-7. At that point I decided I wasn't going to risk trying to catch Dave (I probably couldn't have anyways) and just wanted to survive. Since I had a big lead on third, I just motored around waiting for the race to end. Even after the checkered flag, the RX-7s were racing around and two nearly did serious damage to the car. I ended up with another second place and the car intact except for some minor damage to the bumper.

Overall it was a very nice time. The NASA people were incredibly nice and Tim Noble just looked after us like a mother hen. Bob Evans took some great photos and Glen DiOrio has some great race video! (See it here!) We were really glad to run Sears Point and get to play with our west coast friends. Next time we come, we'll probably bring a tank so we don't have to worry about those RX-7s!

With our little Cobra in San Francisco for two weeks it was time to start the journey back across the USA and head for home!