Lime Rock Park (LRP) and I have this love-hate relationship. Over the past five years I have had two bad crashes, went off or have been pushed off on several starts, and just plain old had bad races there. Well anyway, this past weekend started of pretty much the same way.

(Photos left and below were taken at Pocono Raceway, Long Pond, PA)

Thursday I headed up to instruct at a PDA event. I figured I would get a little track time before the Fri-Sat SCCA Regional this weekend. The first two sessions were wet so I threw on my rain/street/transport tires a set of AVS intermediates. I tooled around for the sessions and that was about it. The last session it dried up so I set the car up for the next two days. Threw on the Hoosiers, filled it up with 100 octane race fuel, and put the JWT race computer that I hadn't run since last year leaving the timing set at 19 degrees, we'll learn more about that later. I ran the session either following or towing along Joe Casella's (runs PDA) 17 year old son, Brian [Casella] in his ex Grand-Am Cup, Integra Type R.  Brian recently got his driver's license, but watch out for this kid. He's gonna be good with some more experience. The best times we could muster were around a 1:07 flat on the 1.53 mile track. I figured that wasn't to bad for a green track and running a stupid supertrapp (save your money they are crap) for sound restrictions. My best time prior had been set last year at 1:05.1 at the NARRC runoffs.

Click here for a most excellent LRP  -> Track Map

Friday went swimmingly as well we got a 10 minute practice in the morning and a 15 minute qualifying session in the afternoon. The practice was no big deal. The car handled pretty well and I ran some where in the 1:06 range. Not to bad. So qualifying came around. the couple of laps I ran in the 1:08's in traffic then clicked off a 1:06 flat in about the 4th or 5th lap. Then all of a sudden the car heated up almost immediately and started losing power. I was like, "oh crap! What now?" Aas I nursed the car into the pits I was thinking that this was just like what happened to Greg Amy a few weeks ago at his race at New Hampshire International Speedway (NHIS)... DETONATION.  At this point I was ready to take a new hobby like Knitting. :)  Anyhow I drove the car back to the paddock still running, but not too badly I might add, and started to diagnose the problem. I first checked the coolant level.  That was fine. Then on to the plugs. Cylinder 1; I pulled first it looked as though it was running slightly lean but not bad. Then the bad news as I pulled #2 thru #4.  The plugs got worst.  Numbers 2 and 3 had the electrodes melted out of them and the #4 plug had no electrode, porcelain insulator, and the other part (can't think of the name right now) was melted away. Lets go back one race at Pocono I had swapped the plugs out with some Champion Platinums.  Unfortunately they were the only plugs the parts store had, so I figured a spark plug is a spark plug right?  Not. I wound up picking up a set of NGK's and bumped the timing back to 15 degrees.  The car ran fine after that.  Moral of the story; Champions are crap, and don't run a race gas program with 19 degree's timing.

To make things worse, I checked the results from qualifying, and to my dismay, they screwed up my times showing 1:08.076.  This placed me in the 19th starting position. I had run a 1:06 flat according to my lap timer and according to what my buddy Phil had on the stop watch. Oh well, shit happens I guess. I would just have to pull a good start.

Saturday came along and I was in a much better mood.  We were the first race group so there wasn't much time in the morning. We gridded up it and before long it was time to rock and roll. We came around for the start and it was on. I got a great jump squeezing between a Miata and some HP or GP car. Then sliced to the outside and ended up passing seven, yeah count 'em "7" cars, by turn one. My thoughts at this point where, "Holy crap!  Where did this power come from?" I came around for the first lap on the bumper of a 1st generation RX7 and looked down at the lap timer and saw a 1:10. Damn not bad for the start lap. I ended up out braking him into turn one and continued on my rampage. Lap 2; As I came by start-finish chasing down an MR2, I glanced at the timer again and saw a 1:04 something. I thought I read it wrong and maybe it was a 1:09 or something. After that I pretty much ignored the laps times and raced my ass off. I got by the MR2, but within the next lap or two he got back by me going into turn one.  I got back by him the next lap.  The rest of the race was pretty much "hammer-down".  At the same time I was reeling in an Integra, I was being chased by a Honda Civic Hatchback. I tried to get by the Integra few times but lap traffic wasn't very cooperative. On the last lap it was my SE-R and the Honda going into turn one which had a yellow displayed at the time he was on my bumper. I caught up to a lapped car entering the turn and had to back out of it as not to pass under yellow. Dammit the Honda got on the outside coming out of the turn and I had lost all my momentum. He snuck by and I tried to stick my nose into the left-hander but couldn't get in there. My only option was to stay in there and spin him out or back out and fall behind him. Well I went with option 2, and backed out and followed him through. That was it.  Back to start finish we ended up finishing less than a second apart. What an awesome race.

I later picked up the results I had finished in 9th place from my horrible starting spot of 19th.  I was ecstatic with my fastest lap, a 1:04.213.  I have been trying to get down into the 4's for the past 3 years. I was still about 2 seconds off the fast lap time of the race and about a second off of Greg Amy's best, but it was personal victory. I still have a lot of work to do, but I really believe the mighty SR20 will be running up front in no time.

Joe pilots a 1991 Sentra SE-R in the SCCA's Improved Touring class. ImprovedTouring.com