NASA Northeast hosted the annual Thunder at The Glen at Watkins Glen International October 2-4.  The first day was a practice day with qualifying and racing on Saturday and Sunday.  The weather wasn’t very corporative, with alot of rain Friday late morning thru Saturday morning and a mostly damp, cold track with little grip.

Friday was pretty much a rain out.  We got 2 sessions in on a green and cold track.  I don’t think anyone broke 2:02.000 and then it really rained.  That ended that.

Saturday started with a fog delay, and then turned mostly cloudy and cold with some wind.  We still had a Pocono North setup on the car, but changed gears (for speed) and trimmed out the back wing (for speed).  Practice was on a mostly damp and green track in the cold.  Qualifying was better — we finally built up to some speed — and then a front wheel bearing broke and fused itself to the hub.  Thanks to the Mach-1 crew and Jeff Canil’s spare parts, the car was ready just in time to race.  I actually got fitted for one of Entropy Racing’s SSR’s to reclass as SU and race if the car wasn’t ready (for points).

I won the Saturday race in class and overall.  This was mostly due to mechanical problems with two of my competitors and some staying out of trouble.  My teammate, Mike Cohen blew a motor.  Joey Scarallo had some issue going into the boot and I passed him.  He came back up to speed, but didn’t have enough time (or speed) to catch and pass me.  The car was extremely areo loose due to the trimmed out rear wing — you can see it try to break loose in the esses a few times.  My fastest lap was a 1:57.278 in the race and the video can be found here.

The Sunday race was a mess.  The start was waived off and never went green.  Turn 1 had a double yellow flag immediately, but I still was passed by half the field all the way into the esses. The race restarts and I get caught behind a mega ST-1 car that is all over the track.  That car ended up crashing right in front of me.  The race ends under black flag with me in 2nd overall and in class.  It was the weirdest time I’ve ever had on the track.  Video is here.

Next and final race is at New Jersey Motorsport Park’s Thunderbolt Raceway Halloween weekend.  I go into the race leading both the class and Northeast drivers points.