As usual, there is no practice on Sunday. Just qualifying and the race. Our qualifying session was scheduled to begin at 8:30am. While this is relatively early for the Sunday quali, we were all fine with it as it meant our race would be at an equally early 12:30. The prospect of being packed and gone by 2:00 is a serious plus when facing a 6 hour tow home. I looked the car over once I got to the track. Everything seamed ready to go and nothing out of place following the race the day before. I still had plenty of gas left over from the day before so I decided not to add any before qualifying. This meant I would be even lighter after quali than I was after the race on Saturday. I knew I'd have plenty of time between quali and the race to figure out the weight issue. I wasn't going to be able to add more than 200 pounds of ballast, so I wasn't sure what I was going to do. Regardless, I had to put that out of my mind and focus on a good qualifying effort.
This time I cared about where I gridded up. I waited for all the crazy, front-running SpecE30 and Spec Miata guys to line up and then got in behind them. I felt they would likely all take off as soon as we left the pits and I would try to build up a gap behind them before my hot laps started. Again a couple of my competitors had the same idea and we lined up together. I vowed to stay on the bumper of the fastest car in my class and knock more time off. That strategy worked for a couple laps before we caught a BUNCH of slower traffic. I pulled into the pits feeling that I had done much better than the day before. My official time was a 1:46.0. I knocked off 0.6 seconds and everyone else got a little slower. While my time was far from great, it got me up to 4th position in class and in a much better position overall.
Next up was dealing with the weight issue. I let the car cool off and headed for the scales. The scales being used at Road Atlanta were a portable set with adjustable pads that can be slid back and forth to accommodate cars of different wheelbases. Two other racers helped get the pads correctly positioned and we weighed the car again. This result: 3020 pounds. A difference of 145 pounds more than the "official" weight from Saturday, and I had even less gas in the car! Most importantly, the car weighed exactly what it should have and I wasn't going to have to add any ballast. Obviously the folks manning the scales after the race didn't quite get the car centered on the pads and caused the discrepancy. We discovered during the racers meeting at lunch that every car they weighed was underweight. Thankfully, the GTS series director understood the problem and chose not to penalize any of us based on the post-race weights. He also urged that we make sure we not leave the scale area if we expect problems like that again. Another lesson learned for this rookie.
Race time. My number one goal for this race was to be more aggressive at the start and not stay out so far going into turn one. Everyone in front and beside me took off at about the same time and no one changed position. That wasn't true of the cars right behind me. A couple cars got really good starts and a Porsche 944 from another class was able to move into position beside me going into turn one. I moved down to the inside enough to hold others off, but the 944 was able to get enough of a run to get by me going into turn two at the top of the hill. I hadn't lost any positions, so I was very happy with the much better start. I was able to take of the out-of-class 944 during our first trip down the back straight and set my sights on the in-class car right in front of me. On to the video:
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Part 3
I was able to stay with the GTS-2 E30 in front of me and finally get by him (to put me into 3rd place in class) in the braking zone coming into turn 10a. The red GTS-2 944 also caught up and the 3 of us were nose to tail. After about 1 lap of that I realized what I had gotten myself into; those two cars were likely faster than me, but were making up ground on me in places where passing is tough. I was then able to stretch out a gap on the straights and keep them at bay. I knew that they would be there for the rest of the race and any mistake by me would let one or both of them by in a heartbeat. We got a handful of laps into the race before a FCY for a stopped car in the downhill esses. I was happy to take a breather for a couple laps while they got the car towed in. While the caution got me back to the rear bumper of the 2nd place, I knew I didn't have anything for him as he was a couple seconds a lap faster than me. Therefore, I focused on making sure I got a good restart and kept the in-class guys behind me behind me. With no drama at the restart, I set off to try to keep running consistent laps and hoped neither of those guys could mount a challenge to get by. Fortunately for me, they had a pretty good battle going on and switched positions a couple of times. Eventually the 944 got by the E30, but they had undoubtedly slowed each other down while battling. The 944 got back onto my bumper, but I was confident that I could keep him back there. A local yellow flag in turn 6 meant that I could take my time getting into turn 7 and focus on getting a good run onto the back straight. As long as I was able to do that, I knew the 944 couldn't get by. While I didn't drive very consistently, I was able to hold him off and bring it home for a 3rd place class finish.
Ending up with a podium finish was a great result, but I was most proud of having been able to hold off two well-matched competitors for almost the entire race. There is still lots of room for improvement, but doing what I needed to do to gain a spot and stay there was very rewarding. I ran a best lap of 1:45.5 during the race, knocking off another half second. My data showed that my theoretical fastest lap using all of the race data was a 1:43.7. The numbers proved how inconsistent I was being as I am typically within 0.2-0.3 seconds of my TFL at tracks I am familiar with.
Road Atlanta is a blast. I can't wait to go back and give it another shot.
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