The first phase of the great odyssey that began some months ago with a long trip to collect a long-dormant but affordable Radical D sports racer has been completed.
A nice race steward affirmed that I'd satisfactorily completed the obligations put forth by The Sports Car Club of America for attainment of a regional competition license and stamped that on the front of my little white book with a huge freakin' red stamp.
At that point I returned to my pit in the flood zone that was the paddock at Summit Point after the inch of rain that fell in the hour my race took to complete. That would have been group 9 - formula cars and sports racers - all on slicks, open to the heavens, last race of the day on a warm, dry, generously rubbered track.
First sprinkles on lap 2 or 3, part course rain on 4, cataclysmic, biblical, torrential bucketing deluge of doom and a full course black on lap five. The Hoosier slicks had grip roughly equivalent to freshly frozen ice on hot Teflon. I helplessly watched the car spontaneously try to skate off the track a half dozen times on the way back to the pit. I changed to rains in this comical deluge as my dear long suffering and thoroughly saturated wife had sprinted back from the pit wall to hurl all the now-equally saturated gear under the ez-up, where she now stood dripping and possibly shivering.
Eventually we were given a pace lap, single file restart and 4 lap sprint to complete 1/2 race distance and a complete event. I was stuck behind the other faster and better driven DSR, but got a good lesson in rain lines and the use of yellow flags as a strategic tool.
And we both got around the brand new $50k+ Radical SR3SL driven by a Bertil Roos graduate/Porsche GT3RS owner, which was sort of satisfying.
The whole process is one of the more rewarding things I've ever done. And I owe MASSIVE PROPS to my wife Abigail who on many levels made the whole deal possible.
