smccurry

Congrats to Mike Singleton, who rightfully should have taken the Fastest Time of the Day honors at Hawaii Raceway Park today.

How did he beat Curtis and the rest of the Lee clan? Rain.
Well, should have beat them. They decided to make an exception to the rules and allow the 1st heat drivers who were sharing cars with heat 2 drivers to take an additional run at the end of the run-offs due to the morning rain to even the results.
Despite this, Mike wowed the crowd with times that were only bested by The Man himself in his fourth run later in the afternoon.

I finished with a dismal 25th place. My own personal worst since my rookie season. I somehow managed to still take the SM2 championship, but Daniel should have had me. He's better than that.

Anyway, Mike finished with a solid 2nd place officially, but is 1st in my book.
I know the Lee's made their decision in light of keeping the classes equal, not looking at the FTD results as that is not part of the run-offs.
Still, for me, I feel cheated. FTD is actually more important to me than the classes and an S2000 should have got it today. Oh well, Mike. Time to get to work and just beat them outright with any weather. You beat a lot of great drivers in the same heat as you (Barry Lai, KVO, GVO, Jayson Guzman, etc... WoW!!!)

kent-k

hey, what's up with the really small font? if you race, you beat all of us to chicken to go.[SIZE=1]

hahnn002

The small font says:

"I finished with a dismal 25th place. My own personal worst since my rookie season. I somehow managed to still take the SM2 championship, but Daniel should have had me. He's better than that."

Don't feel too bad, your worst day is probably better than our best at the track.

hawkdog

Thanks for the post Steve. What kind of times were people posting during fun-runs?

Here's my 2 cents on the whole thing:

Seeing as me winning A-Stock has been a forgone conclusion at every race since Mark P. moved to DS, my goal (now that I have some real tires ) is to win FTD or PAX at every event. I know this was runoffs, and they're handing out trophies for each individual class, but the bragging rights and pride of winning an FTD far exceeds getting a trophy for me. On the note of trophies, the person that really got screwed was Amy Lee. She had won BSP prior to the extra runs. Everyone else in her class got a 4th run, she ended up in 4th place, and lost her trophy.

I have great respect for everyone that runs our events and everything they do for us. I'm not upset about this or anything, but I've done some thinking and I can't agree with the decision to allow extra runs. The two things that keep coming back to my mind are:

First, the extra runs took place about 30 minutes after my final run (and about 40 minutes after Amy's final run). I was back at the pits and had changed 3 of the 4 tires on my car back to their street tires when they did their 4th runs. There was still some water on the track in certain places when I made my final run. I can't say for sure, but 30 more minutes of bright sun probably dried most of that up. It may not have changed that much, but it certainly didn't hurt.

Second, I think the extra runs were unfair well, because they were extra runs. If you have a multiple driver car that runs in different heats, and one heat has better conditions than the other, then tough luck. That is something that comes along with running a multiple driver car in different heats (which is against SCCA rules anyways). I think this rings especially true at runoffs, when run heats were set prior to race day. Yeah, the heat 1 drivers got a crappy deal, but sometimes you have to play the cards you're dealt.

But all in all, I'm incredibly happy with my results from yesterday and I can't wait for April 2nd!

smccurry

All very true. IMO a very unfair advantage to the Heat 2 drivers. It was an extra run and in much drier conditions. It wasn't like all of our runs were dry either. In fact, our very first run was just as wet as theirs. You can tell this also by the difference between run 1 compared to runs 2&3. An improvement of 5 seconds! You're much more consistent in times than that.
I'll bet Curtis has had time to reflect on this decision and might actually regret it for the blow to his credibility. If it wasn't for the fact that it was the run-offs, I bet he would have let it go. But how could he face the guys on the mainland when they go to the nationals without the BSP crown and his daughter captured it instead? hmmmm.
We do owe A LOT to Curtis and his family, as SCCA in Hawaii would not be the same (or even still be happening?) if it weren't for their sacrifices, but this was not his best moment.


As for the fun-run times, yes, they were much better and drier than earlier in the fun-runs, but the rain did come and go for the remainder of the day.
FWIW, I ran 5 times and the last 2 got into the mid-54's, but still couldn't best your time of 54 flat. You only had 3 runs, 2 in semi-dry conditions, so I suspect you had another second or two. They don't post times for fun-runs, but the couple that I heard on the radio for Curtis, he was in the 52's.

kent-k

what's PAX?

hawkdog

PAX is a class-adjusted time....supposed to be used to even out the results so it's more of a test of driver skill than having a faster car.

Each class has a PAX multiplier....faster classes have a higher multiplier (.9XX) where slower classes have a lower multiplier (.7XX) You multiply your raw time by the multiplier, and that gives you your PAX time.

hawkdog

Here's a video of my 2nd run (1.7 sec slower than my fastest run). Sorry about the crappy video quality, my wife was filming this with our digital camera while she was holding our daughter in her other arm.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...24127243466166

808style

wow looks like fun but i would crash guarans!

kent-k

oh yes, i would crash, too. definitely.