Well now that I've had a couple of days to think about it all,
here's my report on the Runoffs.
First, it was great to finally meet Hardy and Ellie Prentice; they
are really delightful folks. It was fun to hang out with Joe
Alexander and Bob Lang as well.
Some general inpressions: Sam Halkias is doing some really neat
things with his TR-6's; they are becoming some really well developed
cars. As you may have heard, Sam was the third place finisher in
E/Prod and had been in second for a while. What you may not know
was that he did this in his "old" car having developed low oil
pressure problems and a broken U-joint in the "new" car. The old
saying about "speed costs money, how fast do you want to go" was
sure true in E/Prod. The first and second place Miatas show the
effects of lots of money, well spent. There was quite a Triumph
turnout at the Runoffs, both in E/Prod (TR-3, 4 and several 6's)
and G/Prod (lotsa Spitfires, most of which are now legal <grin>).
I won't go into lots of detail about our (or Hardy's) adventures
since they can do that themselves. However, I will say that we
had a lot of "fun" doing some impromptu trackside front suspension
re-design work between qualifying sessions. It looks like it
worked since Chip ran his fastest laps of the weekend during the
race - and we brought the car home in one piece!
This has been an interesting summer for me, since I'd been to the
Solo II Nationals in Topeka a few weeks before heading out to Ohio
for the Runoffs. The contrasts in some ways are interesting. While
there were quite a few more entrants at the Solo II Nationals (950
or so versus about 600), the feel was a bit different. In large
part this is due to the fact that most Soloists tend not to own
RVs and therefore are spread out in motels throughout the city
in the evening, while most of the club racers stay on site. This
produces an instant city/carnival sort of feel. Of course, the
workers and crew swelled the size of this city to make the total
number of people invloved more than were at Topeka. I won't
stretch the comparison out any further, but Runoffs really are
something to experience, and are quite addictive - I wanna go
back next year!
I hope that your tow back to California went well, Hardy, and
here's hoping we'll meet again soon.
cheers,
John Lye
rjl6n@virginia.EDU
http://avery.med.virginia.edu/~rjl6n/homepage.htm
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