In my last post, I thought we’d have the totally rebuilt Elan DP02 on track in May, but alas, the ubiquitous Covid delays made it otherwise. But the delays have resulted in a stunning new car that has now been named Elana as it seemed an appropriate sister name to Norma. Jason and Chris at Bulldog Motorsport have created another great car for me to race. The little things that Jason has come up with to give me the “unfair advantage” are remarkable. He dreams about this stuff. Also kudos go to Mike Devins, owner of Hurley Racing Products, who made the new body kit from the design studio of Zebulon Motorsport Consulting. HRP’s carbon fiber work is first rate.

Jason and Chris built this car up again from parts after disassembling it in its entirety after my big wreck last year. The ability to fabricate parts, fix problem areas, address chassis shortcomings, redesign certain components, etc. and make it all come together flawlessly is what makes Bulldog Motorsport one of the very best prep shops in the country. After an abbreviated first test day and then one solid test day at Buttonwillow, we decided to race it at Laguna Seca this past weekend.

To up the ante, one of my main competitors, Chip Romer, in an identical car with years of experience driving the Elan DP02 chassis, was entered as well. Several other DP02s were also entered as it’s become the dominant chassis in P1 now.

After making some minor chassis adjustments during Friday’s test day, we were able to put the car on pole in Q1 with a time of 1:21.770, or only about half a second behind my all-time best lap in Norma. Chip started next to me and passed me around the outside of turn 2, and then later in lap 1, I made a rare mistake and caught too much of the apex curb in turn 9 and spun the car around. Fortunately, no one hit me and I stayed on track and got it going only losing 3 spots in the process. But the tires were flat spotted which created a big vibration. I fought back one place and was closing on two other cars but then a big wreck happened and the rest of the race was run under double yellow flags behind the pace car and it ended that way. Chip got the overall win.

On Sunday morning, with perfect track conditions, I pushed the envelope some more in probing Elana’s limits in Q2. On the last lap of a 15 minute hectic session with 27 cars on track I snaked through traffic at the end and posted the fastest lap ever run in SCCA competition at Laguna with a 1:20.922 that is about four tenths faster than my pervious best in Norma. Check out the video here.

Just like race 1 though, Chip got by me right away and we raced all the way to the end with a solid green flag for 27 minutes and I finished 2 seconds behind him. So even though we didn’t get either race win, the car ran flawlessly and showed real speed potential. I’m feeling a lot better now about our chances at the national championship Runoffs at Indy two months from now.