Sunday Afternoon Update

[James OLC]

We'll it's 5:45 Sunday afternoon and we are ... Somewhere... on I-81 in... Virginia I think...
Summit Point this morning was a bit of a roller coaster. We played some more with the shock settings - resetting everything and starting from scratch and we were rewarded with a much happier OneLapCamaro than we had yesterday. The car felt goon on the track and behaved in a much more predictable manner today - it just goes to show that when in doubt double check everything.
Mary took the first run this morning with some trepidation after spinning yesterday... It's tough to get on a track with a potentially 150 mph straight away followed by a 180ish degree turn when you're not sure exactly how the car is going to respond. The good news, as I said earlier, is the car did very well and Mary's faith in the OLC was restored. Her cumulative lap time of 5:00 was only 15 seconds per lap slower than the Leh Keen's low time of morning so we're working ok. The bad news was that (as I mentioned in a previous post) this is a really competitive year and her time was good enough for 60th place on the day. This means that we will start in 60th position for the rest of the week although we will be able to move up in the ladder as we prove to be faster.
I took the afternoon session - from the now established 60th spot on the grid - and things were looking up. Until the rain came... With around 55 cars done and my turn fast approaching a drizzle quickly became a light shower... Nuts! I don't know if there is anything worse to see as you sit on the grid than rain drops on your windshield but that's what I had now... But it's not like we had any choice so I went out with a final piece of advice from one of the local hot-shoes... "beware of the concrete sealer... It gets slippery in the wet". Wonderful... When we walked the track earlier we found the new sealer to be both sticky and the ideal racing line for most corners... nuts.
Long story short... It was (slippery) but I was able to find my way around with only a couple of pucker moments and was able to eek out a 4:50 - good enough for 50th place in the afternoon and one of the best times posted on the wet track.
We're on our way now to Kershaw, SC - a comparatively short transit of 420 miles (well short compared to yesterday at least). With any luck we'll roll in to town around 9:30 tonight for what could be a decent night sleep before tomorrow's mini-marathon with South Carolina Motorsports Park in the morning (twice) followed by a 150 mile transit stage and one stop at the BMW Performance Center in the afternoon - followed by a 480 transit to Daytona, Florida. 630 miles and three competition events... It's going to be a long day!
Good news is that we remain first in our class although that's more luck than skill at this point.

[David Pozzi]

Great job James!

[dogz67chevelle]

Great job James and Mary. Way to bounce back! Get some well deserved rest tonight, and pick it up even more tomorrow!

deanna