Entries in Thompson Speedway (1)

Monday
Jun302014

My first Wheel to Wheel battle!

This past weekend was a tremendous one at Thompson Speedway in Connecticut. The circuit was originally a road course used in SCCA races in the 1950s, but in more recent times a small NASCAR oval was the primary track in use.  The owners of the circuit decided it was time to bring road racing back to Thompson Speedway, so they built an all new track with certain sections of the oval and also of the original road course.  To tie back to the history of the place, they invited the VSCCA and VRG to run at their official grand opening! The track is very challenging with some extremely tight corners and a lot of off camber exits making it very slippery.  There is one long straight with a tight 2nd gear corner at the end. The rest of the corners are quite technical.

At this race, I was able to hang with the other Giuliettas and MGAs and finished a 5th overall in Sunday's main race.  Here is an 8 minute snippet of the race where I had a hammer and tongs battle with two MGA's.  I was fairly sure I could have caught the white car eventually, but my brakes seem to have overheated (we need to still figure out what actually happened) and I didn't have enough stopping power to make the corner, opting for the escape road toward the end of the race. I managed to rejoin, losing 1 position.  Overall, it was disappointing to go off, but I was really happy with the driving I did and all 3 of us got together and had a good laugh afterwards and patted ourselves on the back for such a close, clean race.