So I had this crazy idea to get some last minute seat time before nationals next month. Seeing as the Mid South region is on summer break and the Southeast was racing at CMP I set my sight’s North to find something a little closer. Luckily, I found a race with the Great Lakes Region with some very competitive 944 Spec drivers only 8 hours away. Thus the trek to Autobahn Country Club.
1)Dan Pina
2)Michael Cooper
3)Chris Simmons
Autobahn Country Club, or ACC, wasn’t really on my radar before this weekend. So I was pleasantly surprised at just how fun, complex and fast this track is. However, because of my last minute entry, I really didn’t have any prep time to learn the track which added a bit more challenge to the weekend. I plan on delving into how I went about learning the track in a companion post. Suffice to say I started the first session absolutely lost on track but managed to get my bearings by race 1 for a podium finish. Or went from, ‘wow this is going to be embarrassing’ to ‘hey, I’m not doing half bad in the course of a few hours.
I definitely plan on trekking back to Autobahn in the near future but for now it’s time to focus on getting the car prepped for nationals.
Race 1
I qualified dead last for race 1 by arriving at this track completely unprepared. But to my surprise, the Great Lakes group wanted to mix things up a bit (and probably felt a little sorry for the slow Mid South driver) and ran an inverted grid. This little bit of luck coupled with the fact that my lap time’s were starting to drop quickly, meant I would finish race 1 solidly in P3.
Race 2
Race 2 was not an inverted start. I qualified P4 and didn’t quite have the pace to chase P1-3 down yet. So finish was where I started. 4th, with 1-3 being Tara Brewster, Michael Cooper and Michael Clark in that order. But the race wasn’t completely uneventful. I just need to be 1 second faster next time around.
Pics Coming Soon.
