Chumpcar West Coast Chumpionship Dec. 8/9 2012

The Javelin may be scrap but I was still able to get one last weekend of racing in for the year! Chumpcar is the bomb and if you want to go racing relatively cheaply this has got to be your best bet (except for maybe go karts?). Anyway, this was the 4th event the Dirt Track Pirates have run. We started in June 2011 at Buttonwillow for a 14hr race and only managed to keep the car running for 7 hrs of it. Then we went to Fontana in October of 2011 and did two 7 hr races. We came in 2nd for both races! This June we went back to Buttonwillow for another 14 hr race. We finished 4th…

Well the 2nd place and 4th place finishes qualified us for this Chumpionship race at Sonoma Raceway (our home track). There were 26 cars competing for the Chumpionship and 56 cars total. The previous weekend had just poured rain non-stop but we really lucked out with dry weather both days. The format was a 12.5 hr race split into two days but it was ONE race so the winner was the one with the most laps over both days. Saturday we ran the NASCAR chute which was cool because I had never been on the chute before. Sunday we ran the carousel. Both days we did NOT run the full esses. Instead we ran the back straight and then the chicane to get back on track at turn 10.

The car was great and everything went pretty smoothly except for a couple of black flags we got for passing under yellow. Joe got one his first session and then I got one too. That sucked. Between those two black flags we probably lost about 3 laps. In the end we came in SECOND in the Chumpionship as well as 2nd overall. We were 5 laps down to the winners running a Geo Metro with a Hyabusa motorcycle engine! It was great to get on the podium but we’re getting tired of always being the bridesmaid. We really need to WIN one of these races at some point.

Here are some pics and I’ll try to get a video together soon.