SCCA Club Racing @ Thunderhill

[Jason@SportsCar]

Heading out tomorrow for Thunderhill Raceway in Willows, Ca., for the BFGoodrich Tires Super Tour and US Majors race weekend. There are 300 entries as of today, with seven cars in H Production. Should be some great racing throughout the weekend. I have not been there since 2010, when the Yaris was pretty much stock, I expect it to by much quicker this time around.

Event info: http://www.scca.com/events/index.cfm?eid=6908

Schedule: http://scca.cdn.racersites.com/prod/...-sched0404.pdf

Live timing and scoring: http://www.sccahost.com/sccalive/

Sad to be missing the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, but I would rather be racing than watching.

[Ryze268]

I wish I could participate in these events, you must have a lot of fun

[xnamerxx]

Good luck at Thill, give em hell.

[Jason@SportsCar]

What an exhausting, but fun weekend. It was great to see Gordon Jones back out there in his BMW 1600, and man can that BMW of his dig out of those slow turns, but it is certainly aero challenged.

This was only my second visit to Thunderhill, first was in 2010 with a nearly stock Yaris, the track was nothing like I remembered. Super busy, very narrow, and not very forgiving if you go off. But if you get it right it sure is a fun lap. Getting there at 3:00pm on Friday we were a little disappointed to find we had to paddock on the entrance road outside the track. Needless to say we got our mileage in trekking in and out of the facility. It actually worked to our benefit, unlike the sardines packed inside the track we had lots of space, it was nice and quiet, and the trees offered great shade. The only drawback was not being able to hear the PA, but thanks to the Majors "time certain" schedule we never missed a session.

The Saturday race was crazy. imo they did not give us enough gap on the split start, and we caught the B-Spec and "STL" (SM in disguise) almost instantly. The most frustrating part was the SM boys tendency to race nose to tail, its not easy to take three of them in one shot when they are just as fast as you on the straights. It seemed like I would have go in and split them up, and Gordon would benefit with the easy pass. Aside from a few interruptions by the DOT back-markers Gordon and I had a good race, side by side a few times. Coming in to the final two turns on the last lap I had a small cushion on Gordon, I slowed early in the braking zone as there was an STL Miata there, but I knew I could not wait to pass him till the straight because Gordon would get the run up to the flag. The Miata left an opening inside so I went, only problem was he did not track out - not sure if he was going for pit in or just wanted to drive down the middle - we made side to side contact. It was hard enough to crack my wheel and knock the alignment out of whack. Luckily all that was left was the run to the flag and I was able to nurse it across. Gordon also got hung up by the guy, as he was still driving in the middle of the track. Managed to reset the lap record during Saturdays race.

Sunday it seemed like they gave us a bit more of a gap on the start, and the field was a bit smaller. Zero traffic problems, it was like an entire different event. On lap one going in to Turn 9 I hit the brakes and started to turn in, I instantly knew the tires did not have enough heat, I straightened out the wheel and went for a ride in the grass. As I tried to get the car slowed I was looking to my left expecting to see Gordon fly by, but he decided to follow me into the grass. What a good sport he is. We both got gathered back up and carried on. My car was off a little from the hit on Saturday, I tried to fix the alignment, but it wasn't as good. Gordon seemed to slow after about three laps, I think his tires were going away. As the laps went by I started seeing lots of British H Prod cars parked in various places. Carl Young moved over from STU after blowing up his Chevy Cobalt to run HP in a Honda Fit, word on the street is they may start to develop this car and run it in HP the rest of the year.

Busy week at work, so its going to be next week before I get to any video.

[Jason@SportsCar]

Made the news feed: http://www.racer.com/scca-home/item/...erhill-weekend

[Jason@SportsCar]

I know there is a track around here somewhere???

[Jason@SportsCar]

Better late than never, the highs and lows of Thunderhill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ya7...mW_FVnyuubVjsw

Not a lot of action, so both Saturday and Sunday are in the same video, Sunday starts around 5:25.