The weather was hot as well as the on track action for our cash race at Thunderhill Raceway Park August 23-24. Five racers as well as four HPDE drivers braved the near triple digit heat to test their mettle against the newly paved track.

Saturday practice proved to be a little eventful as eventual third place winner Jerry Whitteridge had a spin in the very fast turn 8, luckily only causing a big dust cloud. He was able to recover to qualify very well, just missing second place by a small margin. Aubie was able to grab that honor with me a close fourth and Ken, who was battling engine problems all weekend, taking fifth. Rick grabbed another pole with an amazing 10 second margin over the rest of us.

As we rolled out of grid for the formation lap, the butterflies were taking flight in my chest. The start is always very exciting for me and saturday was no exception!

Rick lead us to the start behind the spec 911 guys with Aubie to his right and Jerry and me behind them. Ken was behind Jerry as the green flag waved. Rick got a good jump with Jerry pushing him down the straight. Aubie didn't get a good start and I had space between him and Rick but the PRC guys have a no three wide policy on the start so I had to fall back in line. Rick got to turn one first with Jerry and Aubie side by side, me right behind and Ken still close. A big wall of dust hung over the track at the exit of turn one which hid two 911's from our view. We all had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid the spinning cars and I lost contact with the leaders. Rick stayed in front and it look as though Aubie was going to run with him for awhile, but Rick's talent and experience made the difference as he was able to pull out to a comfortable lead.

Jerry stayed in contact with Aubie the whole race and I pushed hard to catch up and had made up the ground when the triple digit heat got to me. My temperature gauge was in the red and this was the first race on my new engine so I had to back off, coasting at some points on the track. We finished in the order we started and it was smiles all around.

Ken's car appeared to be running on only 3 cylinders so a trip to MCE Racing for testing was in order. His dyno runs told the story with the car only making 90 horsepower! Kevin at MCE was able to determine that among other things he had a bad spark plug. A donor was "borrowed" from a spec miata which helped but a suspected bad injector kept Ken off his usual pace all weekend.