Over 200 drivers took to the course on day one of the San Diego Championship Tour. A high speed affair with a nice mix of high speed elements and some tricky bits that left some people scratching their heads and rubbing their sore shoulders if they got sections wrong. Here are some highlights:
Max Hayter in his Subaru BRZ supported by Whiteline and Vorschlag leads STX by .098 over Mack Tsang in his BMW he shares with his brother. Annie Gill, who made the pilgrimage down from Washington, is in third position co-driving Max’s car with Justin Tsang in fourth . Not to be counted out is Bryan Heitkotter driving the ever so cool 300ZX in fifth place in only its second event. Less than .9 seconds separates the top five so Sunday can bring a switch and swap to many of these positions.
Mike Wood from Alamo, CA got off a plane late Friday night and jumped into Justin Moore’s DS Subaru WRX and has a scant .071 second lead in D Street. This after a first run that featured an early off course excursion. James Feinberg made the trek out from South Carolina and holds second position in his Audi TT with the afore mentioned Moore another .076 seconds back in third. Sunday’s fastest runner should be the winner in this hotly contested race.
As predicted, ESP is a barn burner with the top four drivers separated by .443 seconds. Elliot Speidell leads the charge with fellow Mustang drivers Britt Dolmeyer and Tim Bergstrom close behind. Greg McCance had a run good for second spot on his third run but got greedy and coned it away. This is another class with a good shot of seeing some top spot shuffling going into Sunday runs.
Other notable top finishers include Jeff Wong in STC, Shelly Monfort in SML with a time fast enough for second in SM open, KJ Christopher running unopposed in AM but with the FTD in both raw time and PAX index, and Jeff Cawthorne in a strong eighteen car STR field. The Sunday course brings a reverse of flow with an entirely different finish strategy. Afternoon runs should see very warm temps which brings a chance of some slippin’ and slidin’ on warmer tires. We’ll see what this holds for the drivers in tight races and even those trying to atone for Saturday’s sins.
