Interesting Pro Race Comment

[Mick Robinson]

I was in ghe garages at Miller and over heard a guy talking...

"Jeez, for a Pro series, these guys sure are friendly. Rackly is over helping Schneider, Kevin is over with Jay, Eaton is with Hippi, Mick is at Aleckson......"

Yup, that's us, helping everyone get ready to kick their butts on the track!

[HazelNut]

that's the way it should be. The F2000 championship series has long been this way, and it need to extend to other series. I'm glad that the FE pro series seems to have embraced this philosophy as well.

[Paul Schneider]

Yeah, both Rackley and Osinga provided HUGE help in getting us out there for Sunday's race ...and Kevin too ! After the shunt I took at the second restart of Saturday's race, we had lots of little things to fix. One being that damn actuator. Two of the holes got stripped out and the actuator started to back out during Sunday's qualifier. We had very little time to get things fixed before the race. (I REALLY hope Pro pays more attention when they make the next schedule !!) Without the helping hands in this class, I don't think we would have raced! We also had some hidden damage that showed its face during the race. The car started getting loose in the right-handers and I thought I was getting a flat tire. As it turned out, I was flinging camber plates all over the track . Variable camber does NOT make the car faster !

Anyway, helping our competitors is important in making the Pro Series successful !
(Is the equation HELP = , or = HELP ??)

Also, a big thanks goes to Mick for towing our car allll the way out to Utah !

[Mick Robinson]

Yeah, Wally Osinga was all over the place too. I forgot about him because I didn't see him so much as he was making the rounds.

I spotted him easily on Sunday, he had a grin as wide as...as ..... as the Salt Flats after his 5th place finish with a race long duel to get it!!

Speaking of Salt Flats....I don't recommend taking a BLACK rental car to the Salt Flats. Ummm, seems Wally has wanted to see the Salt Flats for a long time, so we headed out there after we loaded the trailer on Sunday afternoon.

They let you drive right down to the track. What the hey...rental car, Salt Flats.... Let's Go!!

There were standing puddles, so trying to obtain our (Wally, Mark Eaton and myself) goal of 100 mph on the Flats couldn't happen. At about 70, the car was getting rocked side to side by the puddles, so we cooled it at that. We were seriously concerned that the car would flip if it slid sideways at that speed. We could already see the headlines in the paper..."Out of town racers destroy rental car on the Flats.." Probably wouldn't be the first guys to do that though.

Then Wally pulled the hand brake and around and around we went!!! Each of us took turns "driving on the Flats" ummm, but, "sliding on the Flats" was a lot more like it. Nothin to hit for 20 miles!! Let it rip, tater chip!!! Yahooooo Wally awarded me the best slide job of the group. (hey, I finally beat Eaton at something!!)

After this adventure, the fore mentioned black rental car was now mostly white, yup, even up on the roof I had to drive the semi home, but I wonder what the looks from the locals going to work looked like Monday morning as the car traveled down the interstate and pulled into the rental lot at the airport. Just the thought of that had me laughing so hard, I don't remember driving thru Utah on the way home!!

A great weekend, and the Flats with Wally was a nice topping on the cake. Wonder what they have in Minnesota that we can get in trouble on.....

[La Scuderia Raggi]

Wish I had know, I was driving my rental HHR back to Ca at about that time. With the back full of tools and stuff we could have had our own Salt Flat Drift Event! Maybe we should add that to the official event schedule for next year1

[Mark 92]

Yep its nice to have good people at the track to help each other out. Peter and Paul Schnieder, Lee Rackley and my old teammate Ian Harms, helped me put an FE back together last year at Savannah after an FA sent me into the front straight wall at the start of the Saturday national. I never knew FE's could double as helicopters....without their help, it would have been a long night!

Mark Eaton
FE 92 (retired)
SRF 92 (semi-retired)