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With the first round of qualifying in the books, now the racers had a long five hour wait before the green flag dropped on the second to last race of the season. Time that would prove valuable to some teams. Michele left everything she had out on the track and the times she was able to squeeze out of the tC may have just been a little beyond its capabilities. When the Scion Racing/Dynamic Autosports tC pulled off track after qualifying it was clearly puffing white smoke out of its tailpipe! The team quickly rushed to get the car back in race shape, lucky for them they had plenty of time to work with.
But the Scion Racing/Dynamic Autosports crew were not the only ones experiencing technical difficulties. On the other side of the pits aspiring MPTCC Champion Edik Stepanyan was dealing with a handful of issues himself. With only a couple hours to go before the race, the M-Factory Integra started developing issues of the electrical kind!
Race time rolled around and with all the cars in NASA's race group C lined up in pre-grid, it was time to start the race. The field started heading out on track for their outlap, but there was one thing missing…the M-Factory DA Integra! Edik's electrical issues turned out to be a fried Hondata ECU! Apparently sometime between the qualifying session and the team starting the car for pre-race maintenance, an alternator wire shorted out and took out the DA's Hondata ECU. Not exactly a part that can be easily found in the pits, but luckily for Edik they were able to find a stock ECU to use. Edik's team scrambled to install the ECU in the car in order to get Edik out on track before the rest of the field completed the outlap. Once all the teams were on track and making their way through turn 2 of Buttonwillow's CCW13 configuration, those of us in the pits faintly made out the sound of Edik's Integra firing up. It would be too late for Edik to enter the track and have the opportunity to start the race with the rest of the field, he would need to wait till the green flag dropped and the field worked their way through turn 1.
After the field worked their way through turn 1, Edik was allowed to join the race. Though not very far behind, he would have his hands full if he were to try to catch Steve and Justin who were a solid half a lap ahead of him with an entire race field of cars separating them. Something that everyone knew was out of reach the first time they heard the M-Factory DA Integra run down the front straight. The car did not sound anything like itself and it was blatantly apparent that it was down a significant amount of power. Not wanting to cause any further damage to the car, Edik decided to limp it through the rest of the race to at least be able to collect valuable season points. The M-Factory Integra had been stout all season long not missing a single race, so with a 14 point lead and the ability to drop his lowest score of the season this meant Edik did not need to worry about what position he finished these races in – but he did need to finish at least one.
