Rob, Matt and I went down to Charlotte for the national last weekend. The NC Regiona had a very sparse entry with less than 90 cars entered. Maybe it was because of the $250 entry fee, very expensive practice day fee and the doubling of the open garage fee. This race also immediately followed a national at Roebling Road and some of the Northeast drivers who usually attend may have still been digging out of a late season snow or two. Many of the NE showrrom guys and T2 guys weren't there. It is hard to see how this race will survive with such low entries and high fees.
Anyway we only had one other T2 car and that was Kent Gittings with his Mustang so it was a very layed back weekend. We parked next to W2W Bill Hunter and his lovely wife who have converted their GT5 Honda to a HP car In front of us were are old friends Rich Mullin and Kris Kaiser who both run Atlantics out of Pennsylvania. Across the access road was F500 driver and W2W subscriber Chuck McAbee. Larry Delude brought his Neon but we never saw him except on the grid. Rob Whitlock was a now show. Again. Actually there may not really be a Rob Whitlock but his dad brought the Mazda GT3 car and looked pretty quick. We bench raced with them on saturday at the end of the day.
Our race was first and during saturdaynight it poured rain with more rain in the forcast. We were up at noon and since there were only two cars in our class we both decided not to waste a new set of tires and ran on some take-offs. Rob had the pole with Kent beside him and Rob got a very good start and led from flag to flag. The track was mostly dry but the showroom guys were having some very good battles and brought a lot of mud to the paved apexes so the times went down for the T cars as the race went on. Also tire wear played a big part as Kent had at least two tires showing threads and we discovered later that Rob had three that were worn thru the rubber. Good thing the race was flagged one lap early or we might have had some flat tires. Rob won, Kent was second, Mike Kramer was first in SSC and third overall in his Saturn. The race of the race was with SSB cars Ken Simonson and Kevin Stephinski who went at each other every turn every lap and especially at the first turn. Good clean driving by everbody as I don't know of any hitting.
We loaded up as heavy rain was coming and turned north to Virginia. About 2 hours from the track the battery light went on and the alternator gage showed negative readings. We turned off everything electrical that we could and continued. Then the rains hit and we drove all therest of the way home in the middle of a very heavy storm. It was getting dark and we were looking for any open garage. No such luck althoug we did two off course excursions that ate up another hour of valuable daylight. Then is was dark and mysteriously the alternator started working again so the rest of the drive home was just battling the weather and slow traffic. We even took the battery out of the race car so we could continue with power from it if we had to. Rob got a nice trophy and I got a big chest cold. Still a win is good for the points battles and better for the ego.
We're looking forward to Summit Point on 17-18 April. Charlotte did furnish some time for testing to solve some problems that we didn't have time to look at last year.