Wow what a weekend. So here it goes, it is 10:19pm, let's see how long this takes.
Wednesday after class I ran home and grabbed the truck so I could run off and pick up the trailer. I grabed the trailer and Andy Hohl helped me load the car up. I had to load up on Wednesday night because I was heading to Atlanta Thursday morning. The trailer load went well, as did the trip to Atlanta and back. Friday morning I left the house around 7:30 and hit the road to Newport Arkansas.
The trip was rather uneventful, which is always a good thing when towing around a trailer and car. There was quite a bit of scenery on the drive down, the flooding in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas made for some amazing views, though luckily the roads were all clear, from what I saw there were only a few properties that were actually under water themselves.
Friday afternoon I arrived in Newport and found my way to the airport. There were only a few people there so I grabbed a pit spot and started unloading things from the truck. I took the car off and decided to head into town to find a car wash as I had a few hours before the practice starts.
When I got back Jeremy was there, my codriver for the weekend. He made the drive up from Dallas. We changed the tires on the car and then headed up to get the car teched. They had started the practice starts. though there were just two cars running through the lights. We went through tech and each grabbed 4 tickets for starts. I took two practice starts and then Jeremy took his starts. There wasn't much to do on the course for practice starts, just a 200 foot run and then a turn around to come back.
We walked the course twice before leaving the site. On the first course walk I saw a funny looking pebble, I picked it up and figured out it was actually a bullet! On our second course walk Matt Huntman found another one near the same section of course. Ater that we headed into town to find the hotel and some place to eat. The hotel was easy to find, dinner was not. We drove around for about 20 minutes looking for something besides McD's, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. Long story short, we ended up at Pizza Hut with a quick trip to Wal Mart afterwards so I could pick up some lactaid pills just for preventative messure.
Saturday morning we got up and headed to the site for another quick walk through of the course. Matt and Chuck ended up calling and asking us to get Chuck checked into registration, they stayed in Batesville and the state roads they were going to take to Newport were closed due to to flooding.
We worked first heat and were scheduled to run 2nd heat, I was fortunate enough to be assigned to the announcing position for the weekend. The first two heats went rather smoothly. The format of the event was a bit different than they've done in the past, instead of taking your best two runs of the 3 sessions for the weekend (Sat Morning, Sat Afternoon, Sun Morning) they were taking your best run in each of the three sessions.
After the first drivers ran their three runs Jeremy was in the lead in SS, by quite a bit. I was the only second driver for SS so I had to wait till the beginning of the next heat. After my runs Jeremy and I were sitting in 1st and 2nd, me being 4 10ths of a second off of his quick time.
Saturday afternoon we repeated the process, though this time I was only 3 10ths off his time, a few other drivers had sped up, Alex in 3rd place was only .275 seconds back from me. Saturday evening I took another walk around the course with the hope of maintaining my lead in second place, and also with the hopes of catching Jeremy.
Saturday evening we decided to just go to the local mexican restaurant, El Puente. It was packed, half with high school kids and their prom dates! The food was decent, and thanks again to Chuck for picking up the dinner tab! After dinner we headed back to the hotel to play a little poker and do some data analysis on our runs for the day.
Sunday morning we were up bright and early and back at the event site. Jeremy was able to hold onto his lead to take the class win, I however let Alex catch and beat me, by .080 seconds, with 3 runs counting I could have made up .080 anywhere in any number of ways, but when it came down to it I didn't, congrats on making up the time Alex, and also thanks for all the help you have provided on the Corvette so far.
After the end of normal class competition the Hawk Super Challenge brackets were announced. Four of us from SS were in the 32 driver challenge. This was my first time making it into a challenge, as I believe it was also for Jeremy. Due to a DS competitor dropping out of the challenge Jeremy and I were paired up in the first round, which meant that one of us would run first, the other second, the faster of the two going on to the next round.
I thought Jeremy had the best chance at progressing through the Super challenge so I didn't even consider, as car owner, telling Jeremy that I wanted to run first. I figured I would run and warm up the tires giving him the best chance at moving through the rounds. As I did all weekend, I went out on cold tires for a run and ran a 48.*. Jeremy ran a few moments later and was able to get his fastest run of the weekend with a 46.5*.
In the second round he got paired up with the good doctor driving a DS Chrysler Crossfire. The doc turned a great time right at his dial in and knocked Jeremy out of the Super Challenge.
After that we loaded up the car and grabbed our trophies before hitting the road. My drive home was the same as the drive up, though a bit more water. I think some of the water had risen in the flooding, and it also rained a bit during the trip. I took a few more photos of the flooding on the drive home, you can see them in the set on Flickr.
Overall, a great weekend. It was a little chilly, and gas was more expensive this weekend than it was last weekend, but I had a blast. Jeremy got his first National event win, I got my 4th National Event trophy, and second one this year. Thanks again to Jeremy for driving with me this weekend and showing me what the car can do!