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March 30, 2009 - After 2 full days of
non-stop rain, Sunday the skies finally relented and allowed for some
good dry track racing. The local Peachstate Region PCA team, along
with the PCA National Club Racing crew rearranged the schedule allowing
for an additional and very welcomed sprint race on Sunday Morning for
all the racers that bothered to stick around. A big thank you goes out
to all of the great Volunteers that put on these events for the racers.
With no practice before Sunday morning,
Bob took out Papa Smurf for a bit of a warm up, only to find that there
was a rev-limiting problem with the ignition. John and Cody Forbes
jumped right on it and thought they had fixed the problem. Nope. During
the Sprint race, the car was still hitting the rev limiter at
about 5,500 rpm, 1,700 below where it should be. Obviously, this caused
a bit of an issue with top speeds, since the engine really comes into
power from 5,500 thru 6,800 rpm. But, Bob prevailed and managed to stay
in front of the GT-5R class and win.
With a few hours of down time between
sprint and enduro races, the crew jumped back on figuring out what's
going on in the ingition. They were convinced they had it handled in
time for the enduro. Well, almost but not quite. Now it limited at 6,000
rpm - better but not right. So for 90 minutes, Bob ran around trying to
chase down other cars, but getting outrun on the long straights of Road
Atlanta. After a perfect pit stop, and with the win well in hand barring
any equipment failures, he decided to back off a bit and just get the
race finished. Plus, in the last 20-30 minutes, the clutch started
slipping at top gear, so the decision to back off was easy.
All in all, after a lot of rain for
days, Sunday's racing made the entire weekend worth it. And the best
part....Bob finished in front of Bill Williams and his G-class RS
America in both races!
Rainy day at Road Atlanta
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