Well, the Rose Cup Races at Portland International Raceway have come and gone.
For those of you not in the area or from out of the area, you missed some
great action and you missed me taking my first regional race win in my
Spitfire.
I started out the weekend with one goal, to finish all the sessions and finish
the race.
Practice:
Practice went well, the ran good enough for me to get familiar with it and try
a few different options for the correct line around the course. There were a
ton of cars, the national and regional groups ran this practice together, so
there were just over 50 cars in the session. About 3 minutes from the end of
the session the water pump belt decided that it didn't like being apart of the
working system and left, when it left, it took the crank sensor for one
ignition system with it, switched boxes and made it back to the paddock, water
temp never went above 230...Best time of the session was a 1:39.9 or so.
Qualifying:
Again the car ran good. The valve cover gasket started leaking putting a
little bit of oil onto the header, a blue haze followed me around the course.
I could see it in the mirrors, figured out what it was, and determined it
nothing to worry about, unless they black flagged me. The black flag never
came, and I finished the session. Qualifying time was a 1:37.9 For 39th on
the grid of 43. I wasn't last and that made me happy, but I'm almost 10
seconds off the pace of the other FP car who set a new lap record at 1:28 and
change. I figure this is not to bad for my second qualifying session ever,
and the last time out the session was in the rain and red flagged less than 5
minutes in.
Race:
I got and excellent start and could have made up a bunch of spots, but with my
whole goal for the weekend being to finish the race, I rolled out of the
throttle when it went 6 cars wide on the front stretch. After the chicane I
was in last place, so 43rd of 43 cars. Then I started to work my way through
the field. As I got more comfortable in the car and more comfortable with the
talents of others I started to know where I could make passes and where I
couldn't. Our run group is AS, T1, T2, SSB, SSC, FP, GP, HP, Pro7, ITE, GT4 &
GT5. I had a great race with several of the ITE Miatas which run in ITE as a
secondary group to Spec Miata, and an even better battle with a SSB BMW Z3.
Several of the Miatas, the Z3 and myself worked our way up, and on the
penultimate lap, I pressured the Z3 into a small mistake which let me by and
into 29th overall. I ended up 2 laps down to the overall leader, but to my
surprise I ended up with the FP win as my competition dropped out on lap 13
with a broken coil wire. It was a class win, and I'll take it. The car
continued to smoke for the whole session and no victory lap for me as the
e-crew wanted to make sure my car wasn't on fire. During the race I set a new
best time for myself at 1:36.5 which shows I can run in the top 20 of the
group as it stands now and there is easily another 4-5 in driver talent, so I
think I can be fairly competitive after some work on the nut behind the
wheel.
I'd like to give some thanks to ReK Racing, Acme Speed Shop, The Motorway
Ltd., British Parts Northwest and Lots of Members of the Spitfire Mailing list
for the great parts, advice, information and support. Without you all I'd be
about 1/3 as far as I've made it.
All the best
Aaron Johnson
Albany, OR
#38 F-Prod Spit MkIV Oregon Region SCCA
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