It was another fun weekend for the SARRC Series at Road Atlanta, with some extremely peculiar weather all weekend. It was one of the weekends where you keep your rains poised and ready, because you never knew if you were going to need them or not. Great seeing all the usual suspects, and once again, the SM racing gave the closest battles for the lead for both Saturday and Sunday's races. You know that's the case when the workers all come off track still talking about it when the day is over.
Our weekend went like this:
Saturday
We took the pole for Saturday with Cliff Brown and Keith Andrews in the next two spots. I got the early lead with Cliff pushing for a couple laps to get a gap on 3rd. From there on, he and I swapped the lead back and forth multiple times, coming out from under the bridge, 'round T12, and into T1 side by side no less than 3 times. In the end, Cliff had my number and broke away a couple of car lengths. I missed a shift trying to find 6th or maybe 7th gear to catch back up, and he disappeared into the sunset. Awesome drive man.... Congrats!
Sunday
I was on pole again for Sunday's race, which was even more entertaining than Saturday. Everyone started on dry setups, and we took the green to just a very light sprinkle (T5 just a little slick in the paint). Shea Hughes was the class the field, and made it exciting early on, giving Cliff a BIG push past me on the backstraight on Lap 2. On Lap 3 Shea went 4 off in T7 which let me back into 2nd behind Cliff. A lap later, I got to enjoy the push from 10 car lengths back which put me right on Cliff's bumper going into 10a. For the next go 'round the backstraight I got the push again, and we blew by Cliff like he tossed out an anchor. One lap later, Cliff gets the push back past me. Finally on the next lap Shea got a great run on Cliff in T12, makes the pass stick in T1 and proceeds to pull away. We all settled in there a bit for a lap or two, when all of a sudden the light sprinkle turned to serious rain as we were going thru T1. Shea immediately goes straight off track left in T2, and Cliff catches the wet paint in T5 putting him into a tank slapper, handing the lead over to me. That same lap, Shea makes an incredible recovery, was able to get back on track, run me down from about 8 seconds or more back and pass me handily down the backstraight. Never seen anything like it! (Check out the 18:25 mark in the video). From there I was able to hang on Shea's bumper.... and we raindanced for the final 3 or 4 laps. I finally got a run in T5 and made the final pass for the lead with 1 to go. Shea went 4 off one more time in T7 which sealed the deal for me to pick up my first win at Road Atlanta.
Here's some video from Sunday's race. Great drives by both Cliff and Shea all weekend. Huge thanks to Cliff Brown for all of the pointers on Saturday. It helped a bunch, but you still whoop my a$$ on T5 every time. Excuse my excitement at the end of the race in the video.... I had all but resigned to 3rd place at the halfway mark so I was pretty happy to pull off an unlikely win:
BTW... Congratulations to Keith Andrews on his double ECR wins, and Cliff Brown on winning both Pro-IT races and the Saturday SARRC. See y'all at the next one!