Overall the Off Camber Racing / NCRC Spec Miata team of Dave McAnaney, Justin Hall, and Peter Hsu had a good opening weekend. We put in a lot of work over the winter both in car tech to driver improvement / practice which seems to have reaped some rewards.

There were 37 Spec Miata entries, and the three of us seemed fairly quick out of the box. Saturday practice times had all three of us in the top 11 running in the 2:00 to 2:01 range. Qualifying ended up being quite an adventure, since spec miata runs in group 5 with 4 other classes (ITA, ITB, ITC, ITS) there were ~80 cars on track in qualifying. Dave managed find an open lap and posted 6th quickest at 1:59:572. I happened to find some space and grabbed 7th with a 1:59:665. Peter seemed consistently in traffic and did an awesome job to grab 12th after running quicker in practice with a 2:00:495. To give you a feel for how competitive SM is, there were 26 cars with times from 1:59:xx to 2:04:xx, and 12 cars from 1:59-2:00.

There were 2 races this weekend, the first being a normal race and a second "bonus race" which after clearing up some confusion we learned counted for points exactly like the first race, essentially a 2 race weekend with the only difference being the bonus race you grid exactly as you qualified instead of requalifying, placing an additional premium on the qualifying positions above.

The first SM race also happened to be the first race of the weekend early Sunday morning. The track was still cold and nerves were high. We pregridded, and because SM gets a spilt start from the other classes listed above all the other cars headed out (except one) on the track before us. As the spec miatas were lining up a second gen rx7 with orange (rookie) plates that overheated in pregrid went right out in front of Dave and on to the track intent to start wherever he wanted completely out of order. Somehow the track officials didn't catch this, and this complete moron took the green in our group. Unfortunately for Dave this guy, being a rookie moron, also didn't know how to start for shit and blocked dave through 1 and 2. I suppose I reaped the benefit of this and jumped into 5th position. Touring car racer Mike Courtney walked on the field starting from pole, with a good battle for 2nd - 7th occurring for the first few laps with little spacing between the cars. Ultimately lap traffic split the front runners into 2 battle groups, 2nd-4th and 5th-7th. I lead the second battle group most of the time, trading positions a couple times with 6th. The guy in 6th and I both pushed our cars hard and they went away toward the end of the race, fortunately I was ultimately able to hang on to 5th position, with Dave finishing 8 and Peter 13.

The bonus race all three of us looked forward to with our confidence now high from strong finishes. No more rx7s to steal grid positions, and also no mike Courtney on pole..guess he proved his point, moving all of us up one starting position. I had a pretty decent start jumping the group a bit and able to grab 4th position. On the second lap with the 4 leaders running bumper to bumper the leader spun in turn 2 and I spun also in avoidance and ended up on the grass inside the turn facing the wrong direction. Peter also spun (it was a cluster f***) and was mid track with the rest of the 30 car field hard charging. Facing the wrong direction on grass, I popped the clutch to do a 180, but only made it about 120 degrees so I was entering the track at a slight angle. Another SM decided to try and thread the needle between me and Peter, and if I were still there would have been room, but I wasn't and we made contact (racing incident, no fault). I limped around the track pointing the whole field by into hot pits so my fender could be pulled off my wheel and suspension / wheel / tire inspected. When they told me nothing seemed broke I was pissed, said f-it, and went out on track. Something is definitely bent, the car didn't turn right well at all, making 10 a huge pucker factor, but still managed to rattle off a few 2-flats and climb up to 25th position after making a pit stop! Consistency certainly paid off for Dave managing to stay clean and grab 7th and Peter managed to capture 21st, nicely done after letting the field pass him in 2 before getting underway!

For the weekend, Dave is our leader walking away with 30 points (14+16), I ended with 24 (20+4) and Peter grabbed up 8 points (4+4). We'll see if we can throw away that bonus race, or if the whole weekend has to be thrown out.

All in all it was an awesome racing experience that was great to share with 2 other buddies. The camaraderie is a big factor for me and its great helping each other get faster!

Written By: Justin Hall