GRIDLIFE Touring Cup Takes Center Stage at Midwest Festival
Race leader Eric Kutil dives into turn 1, with D.J. Alessandrini on his back bumper.

The 2nd race of the day was completely dry and maintained the starting grid of race 1 which meant Kutil and Kristoff started on the front row again with Alessandrini and Joshua Rubenstein on row 2 with Kelly and Brad Adams on row 3. Justin Kelly was determined to make up for race 1 and started with a bang on the drop of the green. He moved from 5th on the grid and contented for 1st by turn 1 and then pulled a late braking move in turn 2 to pass Kutil on the outside for the lead. Kutil, caught off guard tried to respond but was unable to real in Kelly throughout the entire race.

Kelly and Kutil battled all weekend in a RWD / FWD showdown.

A mistake in turn 3 with a couple of laps remaining caused Kutil to lock up and almost lose it which extended Kelly’s lead and put Aaron Leichty in his Winning Formula NA Miata who was on the move from 10th, right on his tail. Kutil was able to defend and finished 2nd with Leighty in 3rd while Kelly finished 1st with a dominating performance. Alessandrini and Kristoff rounded off the top 5 while Robert Manouchehri in his e36 has the most exciting drive of the weekend, staring 35th and finishing 7th! The end of day one resulted with Kutil being the points leader, Kelly in 2nd, Kristoff in 3rd  and a 3 way tie for 4th between Leichty, Joraanstad and Alessandrini. 

Motorsports director Adam Jabaay was able to run a few sessions too. Here he is driving “Dan”…the sedan.

Sunday started off with another qualifying session to determine the starting grid for race 3. The top 3 were only separated by 3 tenths with Kelly snagging pole with the fastest lap of the weekend, a 1:39.263 followed by Leichty and Kutil. Mr. Consistent (Alessandrini) placed 4th once again and Manouchehri finally closer to the front pack in 5th.

Egidijus Sadauskas, Brad Adams, and Robert Manouchehri go 3 wide past the festival campers between turns 2 and 3.

Race 3 was once again dominated by Kelly, leading every lap of the race. Kutil was able to make a pass for 2nd early on Leichty since the  1.8L Miata struggled with straight line handling. Despite the setup changes Kutil made to his EG Civic to improve high speed stability, the best he could do was maintain a 1.5 second gap to Kelly all race. The team of Justin and Tiffany setup the S2000 perfectly for the track, destroying the competition in braking zones and flying through the high speed sectors like 7.8,9 with outrageous speed. Even though the EG Civic had the advantage in the tight corners, it wasn’t enough to close the gap. Kelly took home another win, 1.6 seconds ahead of Kutil with Leichty in 3rd , Manouchehri in 4th, Alessandrini 5th and Chris Tuttell in his C4 Vette in 6th. Dave Montgomery in his NA Miata had another solid 7th place finish while Kristoff who was high in points after day 1 opted to skip qualifying but made a charge from the back of the pack to finish 10th.

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