Our first Friday races of the season gave us exciting battles for our Chase Race Pro and Sportsman drivers. We had a total of 14 drivers take part in the Pro class, with three drivers racing in Sportsman. The gap between our first and last place Pro drivers in qualifying was under 26.6 seconds with fastest driver Aaron Ziegler in his BMW M4 setting a time of 2:31.123, with SM2’s Tim Milne setting a 2:59.717 around Autobahn’s 3.56 mile full circuit.
We had a mix of Spec Miata’s and GT’s in our Pro class field, as the 14 drivers set out to run six laps for the Chase race. Art Ziesmer pulled in after the first lap, looking as though he would be our only DNF. This was until Blake Strait, in his Corvette Z06 blew an oil line right as our racers reached the halfway mark of the race. This gave us an extremely rare red flag for our Chase Race Pro drivers, resulting in a clean two lap dash. Just two drivers had one “breakout” during the six lapper, and once penalties were applied to the Pro class result, Mike Linko was declared the winner of our season opening Chase Race Pro class, with Ben Hasbrouck 2.5 seconds behind in second, and Mark Basso rounding out the podium in third.
The Sportsman class only had three drivers in its field. This was likely down to a false weather report earlier in the week, making others decide against coming on out to race. At first it seemed like it would be just Mike Gallagher in his Ford, and Ron Van Dyke in his Porsche might be our only two Sportsman drivers in the field, but at the last minute, Jensen Bene’t suited up to start and park to fill out the podium. Mike Gallagher and Ron Van Dyke battled it out for the Chase Race Sportsman victory, with Ron Van Dyke beating Mike Gallagher on track. However, both Van Dyke, and Gallagher had “breakouts” during their six laps, with Van Dyke having two in comparison to Gallagher’s one. This meant after penalties were applied, Gallagher won the Sportsman class, ahead of Van Dyke in second, and start and park Bene’t in third.
