John:
This may be our first National Tour at Castle but its not the first
National Tour conducted by our region. Our region conducted/hosted a
National Tour about 10 years ago at Crows Landing.
"John F. Kelly Jr." wrote:
>
> Our first-ever SCCA National Tour event at Castle Field in Atwater, CA,
> came off extremely well.
> There were 276 entries, however, not everybody made it to the
> event.
> The weather was sunny and breezy.
> The concrete surface had a light layer of concrete dust on it
> through which the first run group cleared an 8-ft. wide swath each morning.
>
> I'm sure we'll hear/read about other aspects of this event from
> people who were there and even from people who weren't. <G>
> My own experience was generally positive but dealing with the
> scales caised more than a bit of grief on several competitors, including
> Frank Stagnaro in C Prepared and Jim Tikijian in D Prepared. Frank's car
> was 4 pounds under his minimum. He was assessed a two-second time penalty
> and came back to win the class. Jim was about 25 pounds under in his 1098cc
> Spridget and they gave him the slowest time in class plus a two-second
> penalty.
> After Pat's Sunday runs our Lotus 7A--packing over 210 additional
> pounds of ballast!-- weighed in just one (1) pound over the minimum. Whew.
> For my runs two run groups later I stashed five (5) pounds of tools (Silver
> tape and nylon ties held it together) into the back of the car. When
> weighed the car was now at 1212 pounds. Where the other six pounds came
> from is a mystery. Jim's penalty moved me to second in DP, only 5.5 seconds
> behind Chris Kannan. The "equalizer Ballast mandated by the SEB certainly
> did its job. Chris Kannan loaned his class-winning Honda to Paula Whitney
> who was second after Saturday but she felt ill on Sunday and didn't drive.
> Jeanne's Wienies provided/sold hot dogs and ran out! The Jesus
> Villarreal dinner party under the wing of an air museum's aircraft was a
> great social gathering.
>
> --John Kelly
--
Kenneth Allan Mitchell
mailto:nokones@kenmitchell.com
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