December 2010 – Page 2

Driver Change – 10pm

Will Schrader got into the car at ten o’clock. Jonny had been in the car driving in the rain for over 4 hours. We ran as high as 12th place overall during this time and returned to the race in 15th. We still have an approximately 5 lap lead in E3.

The previous caution for the incident at turn 1 ended being changed to a red flag condition. All of the cars were stopped on the front straight for about 10 minutes – about half a dozen caution laps followed as they cleaned up the mess. Two cars of the older Honda / Acura variety, who appeared to be team mates, had found each other in a big way. It looked as if everybody was okay, but the cars… – not so much.

8:22 pm – Full Course Caution

It is raining relatively hard and there is another Full Course Caution – this time in turn 1. The incident ended near the exit and on the track. We are preparing for Will Schrader to get into the car.

More Rain

We fueled Jonny 30 minutes ago, and everything continues to go well. The rain had slowed and then stopped before our trip to the pits, but had started again before we had to hurt ourselves by thinking too hard about what to do next. There is no sign now that it will stop anytime soon.

The confusing live timing system has us believing we are up by approximately four laps. The second place team is another Performance Touring (PTE) based Miata (Team Integri). I don’t think we’ve ever seen this team before.

Full course yellow at 7:45pm for a crash at turn 9.

Mid-Day Race Photos

Another occurrence during the recent extended full course yellow was that a car apparently spun and hit a safety vehicle. That is the kind of thing they take your birthday away for.

2nd Driver Change – and Rain

Jonny Davies just got into the car. We had a lengthy debate about how, where and which tires to change – the rules only allow a single tire change per pit-stop in the hot pits.

We ended up going to full rains at just about the exact time we were due to put Jonny in the car. We were just over 4 minutes to get into the paddock, change 4 tires, swap drivers and fill with fuel.

The rain has been medium-hard since we put the new tires on, but currently seems to be lessening.

We are currently the class leader.

4pm Update

Bruce Wilson is in the car and we’ve been solidly in the top 3 for the entire race. There was just a full course caution for a roll-over in turn 3. The crashed car is the #93 Honda Performance Development CR-Z, which had been leading our class. Results currently show us as 1st in E3 and 10th overall – but the scoring system is a little tough to decipher at times. In any case, we believe we are the current leader.

We just did the fuel stop at the mid-way point of Bruce’s stint. We normally only change tires during driver swaps, but we needed a right front. The car has a had a bad push since the start and we also took time to reconnect the rear sway bar, which had been left disconnected as part of the new set-up.

Bruce says that the handling has improved and this should solve our front tire wear problem.