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This year's Hyperfest at Summit
Point was marked by two important things: my birthday and a return to the
winner's podium. The weekend was mostly good - a crash with Doug's BMW was
the exception - and reflected some real changes in how we approach things.
Bobbie raced first on Saturday and moved up a few cars to finish in the top 20. She ran well, but was getting overanxious and not completing the passes against some cars she could beat. For me, I started sixth and felt lucky to get that: this was a really fast field thanks to the pro drivers. I ended up moving into third place, but a wreck on the same lap stopped the race and the reverted the field back to a fifth place finish. I was competitive, but that doesn't get you on the podium.
Saturday night was the Daisy Dukes competition and usual Hyperfest festivities with drifting and roll-over competition. Bobbie and I talked about her race line and she made some adjustments on Sunday morning.
In the first session she picked up some good time and moved through traffic even better. For the race, she ended up in 14th position and a very satisfying race.
Qualifying for me was nearly a disaster: we ran out of fuel and then didn't have any brake lights. Fortunately we had a couple of quick laps that put us back in 6th place for the start. The brake lights proved to more serious with the light fixtures themselves being screwed up. Fortunately Harry was able to make a work-around or we would have been dead in the water. The work paid off for the race.
It was a fast pace and the car seemed to be missing a cylinder at first, but it just turned out to be the heat. Once we got going and catching the lapped traffic, I was able to work on some guys in front of me. With two laps to go, I finally got by Bryan Dobyns. Dobyns is not only the guy who built our car, but he's turned into a real friend who has helped me at every step of the way with my race career. His car was a bit down on power, but it was still gratifying to get by him even if it took an aggressive move to put a slower car between us so he couldn't catch me at the finish.
What a great birthday!
(BTW, many of the pictures are courtesy of Doug Lucy, EuroImage, and FinishLine Productions.)