Live Results
Holy crud was it hot! Getting into the mid to upper 90's today, it had even California native Shelly Monfort unhappy. The dry heat and high temps were only slightly improved by a light wind throughout the day. Being an airport, there was minimal shade to be had, except the canopies setup in paddock. The surface started off dusty and loose with the L1 drivers, but soon rubbered in nicely on the clean chosen line.
L1 started off the action of the morning and very hot afternoon runs. After the morning session, Tamra Hunt in the Davis CSP Miata was sitting with a comfortable lead of 1 second over Jordan Towns in the Mitsubishi Evo and Katie Lacey 1.5 seconds back from her. On the afternoon Hunt would not slow down, dropping 9/10 off her left side, and 1.6 off her right to give her a combine 69.267 which would be good enough to lead over the entire CSP open class (lucky for them she ran Ladie!). Hunt would also find herself in 2nd place on index for the whole event. Towns who was sitting 2nd, also found time dropping 1.3 sec on the left and 1.4 sec on the right to stay in 2nd place 1.6 sec back from Tamra. After having a rough morning session, Shelly Monfort was able to clean up her cones and get in some solid runs in the DSP BMW. A pair of 36.2 sec runs would leave her 5/10 behind Towns going into day 2.
After taking most of year off, Geoff Walker traded in his S2000 for a shiny new ND Miata to bring back to STR. It looks like that was likely the right move to make. After morning runs Walker was leading Wilmington Pro winner Brian Karwan by 5/10 of a second. In the afternoon, both Walker and Karwan would find 7/10 to keep the .5 gap going into day 2.
CSP morning runs looked somewhat like the last few Pros, with Billy Davis taking an early lead in the class dipping into the 34's on both sides. After morning runs, he would be the only driver to have done it on both sides. Mike Kline would have a near matching 34.9 on the right side, but due to a DNF had to stand on a slower 36 second left. In the afternoon runs, Davis would shave hair off the right side, but nothing on the left. Mike Kline however, would drop 1.6 seconds to get within 4/10 of Davis for 1st place. Neal Tovsen would also clean up and get to a 34.9 on the left, and 35.1 on the right which would put him in 3rd, 4/10 behind Kline.
SSR is once again one of the tightest class competitions. After afternoon runs, Grant Reeve would be holding down the top spot with a 34.8 on the left, and 35.0 on the right. Josh Luster managed to not DNF 2 of his afternoon runs, and those runs turned out to be very fast leaving him just .095 out of 1st. Behind him was Sam Strano just another .053 back. Sunday morning runs are going to be critical. Every tenth clearly counts.
Tune in to Saturday action for all the fun!
