Who's Going?
Saturday runs ended on a disappointing note as a handful of drivers had their second session runs pushed back until Sunday morning so patch work could be done to the surface at Mineral Wells. But nothing could dampen the excellent course designed by Vivek Goel. The course was epic in size and speed for a ProSolo course, as we have come to expect from Mineral Wells. The top FM times could only get down to either side of 41 seconds.
In AS David Hedderick ran clean runs, which meant trouble for the rest of the class. He goes into Sunday 1.455 seconds ahead of Iain Peebles. Nick Gruendler sits in 3rd but is resting on his first left side run and has the raw time to take second away from Peebles.
Course designer Vivek Goel leads AS by a .035 sliver over Todd Roberts. The battle on Sunday will be between Goel and Roberts unless Jerry Centanni can find over a second of time from the left and right combined. Jeremy Foley rounds out the final trophy position in his BMW M1 co-drive for the weekend.
Tyler Kvetko followed up a nice showing in Lincoln last weekend by ending Day 1 at Mineral Wells leading CS. And this time he leads, 2015 CS National Champ David Ogburn III by .357 seconds. Chris Levitz is in 3rd despite resting on his 1st right side time because of two red lights.
Follow the Zia Sun and it will lead you to the DS and ES leaders. Tom Reynolds maintains a .367 second lead over co-driver Paul Dodd with Dennis Sparks .340 seconds behind in 3rd place. ES leader Paul Brown may have it easier on Sunday than his fellow New Mexicans. His gap over Juan Mendez is a solid 1.190 seconds.
In ProSolo there is always the chance to catch up on Sunday, but Ken Orgeron's 1.422 second FS lead will most likely be too much of Matthew Grainger to overcome.
So... Much... Grip...
As always STR is close and crowded. Kerry Coughlin leads Chris Leclair by a scant .187 seconds. Rickey Crow is another .552 seconds behind in 3rd followed by Robert Horton in 4th. Look for any of these drivers to put the pressure on Coughlin on Sunday.
The ladies classes have some solid participation this weekend. Beth McClure-Strelnieks seems to have a solid lead over Su Brude at 1.240 indexed seconds but Su and Stan are still working out the kinks in their new 911 Turbo so improvement tomorrow is a distinct possibility. Deana Kelly leads L2 but only by .131 indexed seconds over Jordan Towns. L3 is the closest ladies class with .386 separating Jodi Fordahl (1st), Amy Fair (2nd) and Jennifer Maxcy (3rd).
R1 and R2 are the primary classes to have drivers waiting until day 2 to complete their session 2 runs. But Jason Hobbs and Erik Strelnieks each have over 2 second index leads over their respective classes. Perhaps Troy "Raw Time" Acosta could have edged Mark Madarash for 2nd in R2 if he had properly counted to 4 instead of going to impound after only 3 runs. Maybe he'll have counting sorted out by Sunday or at least can get a spectator to count for him.
Tomorrow could hold some change in position, and of course will bring us the Super Challenge. Be sure to check in on the action.
