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| This is one hell of a fast car for being FWD and on Street Tires. On Saturday Doug set the Street FWD class record with a 1:14.160 lap, could he better it on Sunday? |
SUNDAY
Rolling in on Sunday was different than expected. Upon entering the track a new vantage point was chosen to shoot some pictures. Setup was done just in time to catch the first GTA session on track. As the cars took the course the World Racing Scion came around on the warm up lap and did not come around again. We were hoping that perhaps the track conditions were less than ideal and that they had chosen to save it for later in the day. After snapping some cars we made our way back to the pits to realize that was not the case. We were greeted by the World Crew in the middle of open heart surgery. Yep in the time it took us to get back the World guys had the engine and ancillary systems out. After talking to Rob from World the prognosis was a cracked sleeve. The goal was to have the car back up and running on a back up engine by the mid afternoon session. We watched them tear through this complicated process like clock work. Never looking frantic or even running around the pits they pushed through and got the car back up and running under it's own power to lay down some laps. The question is would they be able to better their time from Saturday on a fresh engine?
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| From this… |
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| To this in under 1 hour. |
In addition to the work going on in the World pits, I was closely watching for the arrival of Daniel O'Donnell to see if he would be able to beat Jeff Westphal in his own car. Remember folks I had BIG money riding on this as well as the ability to talk serious shit to Mike Warfield if Daniel DID in fact pull through. When I finally saw Daniel strap in and head out for his first session I paid particular attention. I was a bit nervous after the first stint when Daniel came back in with a best time in the mid 1:11 range, he only had 3 sessions left to beat Jeff's time…
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| Probably the best sounding car out on track was the GroupAWheels.com piloted by Joey Scarallo. I also put down some seriously quick lap times. |
Despite the extreme heat in the air it also began heating up for the overall fastest time of the weekend. Jonny and Joey Scarello in their RWD powerhouses along with Tony Wiesenhahn and Whit Staples in their AWD machines were doing their utmost to catch Jeff Westphal in the GST L. The Fortune Auto guys were looking to go faster and in order to do so had to procure some aero enhancements from the local home improvement store.
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| Whit pits the Atlantic Motorsports/Fortune Auto evo after a rear wing issue. The team used their local place with the helpful hardware man to sort it out. |
