Auto Club Speedway Majors Tour Race Results – Jan 2016
Round 1 & 2; Auto Club Speedway – SCCA Majors Tour
I can sum up the first race weekend of the year in one well know phrase: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly!
The Good. Unfortunately the wasn’t a lot of “Good” to report. On Friday we did qualify the Stohr WF1 in 3rd, with a personal best time of a 1:35.3. A full 1.2 seconds faster than January 2015 when we put the car on pole. Keep in mind that we did this with less HP, after the race in January 2015 the SCCA in their infinite wisdom decide to revise the spec line for the motor mandating greater restrictions to the air inlets.
Additionally, I got to practice some high speed drafting-overtaking on the banking, Auto Club Speedway and Daytona are on a short list of tracks were we run flat out-at high speed for a significant duration of time(145+ mph). Enjoy the practice/qualifying highlights:
Race 1 Saturday/January 30th: the phase the bad sums it up! The paddle shifter system malfunction on the way to the grid. Car number 8 was never released from the grid – a no start for Race 1!! So not much to report other than it wasn’t much fun.
Race 2 Sunday/January 31st: The weather prediction for Sunday was El Niño torrential downpour. So weather was definitely going to be a factor. Rain conditions can be a great equalizer or separate the men from the boys, it goes without say that weather would most likely play a role in the race outcome. After winning Saturday race and smashing the track record, Jim Devenport decided he had accomplished everything he wanted that weekend and bailed. Chris Farrell was now on pole, well until his Stohr decided that it didn’t want to move forward. This advanced me to the pole position, watch the race unfold in the worse rain conditions that I’ve experienced: