Just pulled into home this afternoon and have most of my stuff unloaded.
Had a great time at the CRC! Seeing the weather forecast Friday
night and Saturday morning I was looking at a washout. "If you're
planning to be out this weekend, Monday afternoon looks to be the
best time." Of course, the event ended early afternoon Monday.
However, the rain was off and on, we got in a fair amount of racing
in the dry and generally the weather wasn't that bad... I found that
the new Speedsters that I mounted at the beginning of the weekend
(got the old set almost down to the cords) worked pretty well in the wet.
Since I had never been to Portland International Raceway before I
followed John James around in the rain for the first session on
Saturday morning. I found that was an excellent way to learn the
track - low speed, plenty of time to look around. It was raining
hard enough to get my suit wet but not hard enough to make the track
undriveable. I eventually passed Jeff and started to push it a bit
in the wet, figuring that I'd need to understand how far I could push
it. The 2nd session on Saturday was on a drying track, so I got to
go a bit faster. Since most of the field didn't go out in the first
session, and each session after that was gridded as a race (with the
grid position based on the finishing order of the prior race) I got
to start fairly near the front. Since the TR-3 / TR-4 normal group
was oversubscribed we were moved to the group with the Corvettes and
Mustangs. They came out for this race, so mirror watching was pretty
important. Partway through the session, someone oiled down the
corners at the end of the back straight all the way down the front
straight. I had a great dice with Bill Hart Jr. in the Devin TR,
eventually passing him when he got a wheel in the oil and couldn't
put down the power. The Handicap race finished out the day. I had a
good run in this, and I believe that Triumphs took the top 6
spots. Lunker won it, Jeff Quick was right on his tail, I came in
3rd with designs on both of them and Mordy FLEW by me right after the
checkered flag waved. I didn't even know he was there, I was so
intent on the first two guys... This race was entirely on a dry
track, I think.
Bill and his family (with master chef Henry Frye) put on quite the
shindig Saturday evening. Bill Hart and I exchanged pleasantries
regarding our earlier dice, and Bill and Tony Garmey were beating the
front of the Peyote back into shape. Seemed the FV driver who spun
didn't keep his car locked down and shot back onto the track directly
into Bill's path. Grrr.
- Tony Drews
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