NASA-SE season finale at Road Atlanta Options

[wstukas]

This past weekend we had our season wrap up at Road Atlanta. We had a great turnout with 17 AI cars, including the entire 2012 Nationals podium! I only had to finish the race to secure the points championship; but with all the out of region guys coming to play I made sure I brought my a-game. Allen Thornton made his first ever start in American Iron and ran very well considering he was running my old hand-me-down Toyo's and is still 300 lbs. overweight for his power. He qualified 14th, but had to start at the back as it was his first race. He battled his was up to 11th beating several AI regulars.

I started 2nd to Dean Martin, both of us qualfying nearly a second under my previously set track record. An oil cooler let go on one of the S197's on the warmup lap and oiled down T6, right on the racing line. After slipping through it the first lap, everyone rim rode T6 for the rest of the race. Dean, Joel in his AIX Challenger, and myself checked out from the rest of the field pretty early. I ran my race and waited patiently as the heavier cars overworked their tires; and before long I was by Joel and right on Dean's bumper. I got along side of him several times, but failed to make anything stick. Late in the race, with cars sitting off track in several places, they threw a double yellow to clean up the track. This was the last thing I wanted to see. We re-started and ran a green-white-checker finish. Dean's racing experience paid off as he navigated traffic VERY well, and I could not get to him to challenge for the win. Even though I wound up 2nd, it was a great race and a great weekend.

See vid's below. Part 2 has the better action trying to get around Dean.

Allen and I are both tearing into the cars in the off season to get ready for 2013. We have 1 for sure, and possibly 2 very fast CMC S197's coming to join the AI party along with another 4th gen AI car bought out of the Colorado region.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TlJQ8FR7eY

and part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQt9wFdhKb0

Enjoy!

[athornt2]

Great write up Will!

Next year is going to be a blast but first I've got to get a considerable amount of weight out of my car. Luckily, I've still got the factory hatch, torque arm, and the t56 so it won't be hard to drop weight immediately. I've got a lot of work to do in order to catch Will....

Here are my two videos from Road Atlanta:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvP8h4Nswc8 - Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30rcvt4KNMw - Part 2

Here is a picture courtesy of Tyler Goforth Photography -http://tylergoforthphotography.com/

(IMG:http://i811.photobucket.com/albums/zz31/athornt2/American%20Iron%20Build/al_006.jpg)

[Beach Cruiser]

Nice driving! I was there on Sunday and did a Hyperdrive on the track in my rental Camaro SS. First time I've ever been there. Gotta say after doing this for a while the HPDE1 guys that I drove with are SLOW! No offense, we were all there, but very difficult to predict what they were going to do (or not do) the two toy races on Sunday sure were action packed.