2005 Race Results

Seattle, Washington 10/1-2

It is official; our team has been upgraded to Area Road Racing. We are now racing in Group 6 of conference racing, with all the other senior drivers. Saturday's race went very well. We were able to edge out our fellow Formula Vee in the Group 8 race at the finish. It was back and forth the entire time and we came around on the final lap in the lead. He had gone inside on every lap at the start finish line, while we had stayed high to setup for turn 1. On the final lap, we stayed low and blocked his last second pass attempt to claim victory.

Sunday was a totally new experience. Racing against senior drivers, former and current conference champions. Guys with one bad arm, and another with about 4 fingers! :-) Anyway, the race started off well, when I passed Al Ores on the start and ran ahead of him through all of lap one. I knew he would get by me on the front straight, as he has a much higher HP motor than I. I left him room through turn 1, and when I tried to cut over to setup for turn 2, we were just too deep into the corner and ended up spinning. We ran the remainder of the race trying to catch up to the pack. We finished 4th, out of 4 Formula Vee's. It was still a lot of fun. Can't wait until next season!!!

Portland, Oregon 9/24-25

First off, if you are pronouncing it Or-a-gone....just stop right now. The correct pronunciation is more like Organ. Anyway.....We finished Group 8 2nd overall out of 8 entrants. First of the Formula Vee's. It was all thanks to our Crew Chief. During the first testing session, we discovered that we were leaking transaxle fluid out of the right rear drive shaft. Joe was able to quickly disassemble and fix the defective o-ring in less than an hour. We did not even miss our next practice session. He also fixed some minor handling problems we were having under braking, and even managed to swap out a master brake cylinder on another car that we were pitting next to! He was definitely the MVP this weekend. Our times steadily improved over the weekend with our initial timing around 1:47 and our fastest race lap was 1:40.344

This is still well off the pace of the senior cars, but it is a great improvement over the weekend. With only days before Seattle, we are scrambling to prepare the car for the fastest raceway on the schedule for us this year.

Mission B.C. 9/3-4

We WON!!! (Sort of) While we did finish first in our class in our Group 8 Race this weekend, we were the only car running a Formula Vee in Group 8. So I guess we finished last too. However, our best lap of 1:31.133 was far improved from our first time on the track. Our lap times improved by over 5 seconds from qualifying to the race.

We have some work to complete on the car in time for the Portland race, so we are busy getting her ready for the trip to Oregon.