National Championship Season-First Win with NASA, Two To Go with SCCA

The racing season is winding down and that means the national championship races are on the line with two different sanctioning bodies. For the first time ever, we elected to compete in the Super Unlimited class at the National Auto Sport Association (NASA) national championship races. This year’s event was held in Austin Texas at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) on the Formula One track. Super Unlimited (SU) means there really are no rules and you can run whatever you want. So it was a chance for us to run our Norma in her fully developed state without any artificial restrictions. There were several noteworthy competitors entered as well including the defending champions—Davidson Racing and their pro driver Brian Frisselle. Their race car is an older Norma with a very powerful BMW 6 cylinder engine making about 450 h.p. versus our 285 h.p. Their car was built specifically for SU.

Jason actually had a lot of experience with this car as he crewed on it several times in the 25 hours of Thunderhill including the year it won the overall title. We knew the Davidson car would be faster in a straight line but felt we could make up for this with our superior braking and cornering speeds, so the stage was set for a good battle. The real battle, though, turned out to be among the mechanics.

The Davidson car only turned one lap in the first qualifying session and then the motor blew up. We successfully ran both qualifying sessions, turning the fastest laps, and putting the car on pole. In the qualifying race on Saturday, we ran in a rain storm for almost 5 laps before coming in early due to the dangerous conditions (watch treacherous rain video here). Meanwhile, the Davidson car was still being worked on.

In drying the car out from the rain storm, we found out the front oil seal had failed and needed replacement. Jason and his assistant Cody (Chris was back at the shop preparing cars), tore the car apart and 8 hours later it was back together and ready for the championship race on Sunday morning.

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Amazingly, the Davidson car finally made the grid and started only a few rows behind me. I was starting in 5th place after coming in early in the rain race. By the end of lap 1, the Davidson car was in 2nd and I was in 3rd and we had a double yellow caution period. After the pace car pulled back in, the race was on as both of us got around the 1st place car and we both set our fastest lap of the race on lap 8 in the 2:07 range and then the Davidson car just quit running on lap 9. And that was that. Officially, Jimmy Casey finished less than 2 seconds behind me in a Radical SR8 but we had plenty of speed in reserve if it was needed.

Jason really won that race for me by giving me a car that ran flawlessly the whole time I was there. We both made winning that race a goal for the season—so mission accomplished. Check out the highlight video here.

Here is a link to the official NASA article touting the win: https://drivenasa.cld.bz/NASA-Speed-News-Volume-7-Issue-10-November/44/

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Now all attention goes to trying to make history and win the SCCA Runoffs in Prototype 1 (P1) and be the first team to ever win both sanctioning bodies national championships in the same year in their premier class. In addition, we are competing in Formula Enterprise 2.0 (FE2) for the first time at the Runoffs and hope to do well in that one too.

In fact, Sports Car magazine picked us to win both races. I’ll gladly take that pressure in P1 but FE2 is a different story. I’m doing that class for fun and there are plenty of top drivers capable of winning that one, so we’ll see what happens. Here are the links to the predictions:

http://www.sportscarmag-digital.com/sportscar/october_2018?pg=48#pg48

http://www.sportscarmag-digital.com/sportscar/october_2018?pg=42#pg42