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The Enhanced Performance, Good Cars Only, Gabo Solutions, Melanoma Canada #77 Formula Mazda Team had an eventful weekend at the SVRA Road America SpeedTour. We ran with 9 – a fine collection F2’s, Formula Atlantics, Indy Lights, F3000’s and Formula Continentals. The weather was perfect for our four days, with a mix of both sunny & cloudy days, ranging from the 14's to the mid-20’s Celsius. Over the course of Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we were on track a total of 7 times; 3 on track practices during the Thursday test day, followed by one practice, one qualifying session on Friday, a second qualifying session and Race 1 on Saturday and Race 2 on Sunday. We haven’t been back to Road America since 2018, in that time the track has had some amazing changes including being repaved this past fall. The track is as smooth as glass and once it rubbers in, it will be extremely fast. Over the course of the track day and the practice sessions, we improved our lap times substantially to a respectable 1:27.345 on medium compound Goodyear 470s.  We definitely had our work cut out for us, as most everyone in our race group had much more horsepower than we did. In the first qualifying session, we qualified 10th of 18 race cars, 1st in our 9F4 class with a 2:27.035. In the second qualification session, we qualified 14th of 20 race cars, 1st in our class, with a 2.23.639. In Race 1, our race group included some high powered open wheel race cars, including a Benetton, a Panoz, an AF 01, a Ligier F3, and more – the competition was stiff for our diminutive Formula Mazda. We started in 14th position and began to make up positions quickly, by lap 4 we were in 10th place lapping at 2:23.288 where we finished, first in our class. Prior to Race 2, we made a suspension adjustment with the rear bar to try to get a bit more grip. We started Race to in P 10 and realized that our suspension change caused the rear of the car to be quite loose. We fell back to 13th fortunately, we still finished 1st in our class with a best lap time of 2:22.201 (within 0.5 seconds of our best previous lap time n soft compound (255’s) Goodyear tires).  Overall, the race weekend a tremendous success – the track was fantastic, the #77 Formula Mazda was a dream to pilot, the event was packed with competitors and spectators. And the entire weekend was very well run. Other than a small oil leak, our race car performed flawlessly. Of course, we need to give a big shout out to our sponsors; Enhanced Performance, Good Cars Only, Gabo Solutions and our charity sponsor Melanoma Canada. A very special thank you to Bill and Shirley Vallis of Vallis Motor Sport for their excellent track side support, and their commitment to the long drive to Road America.
Click here for more photos from this race weekend. A very big thank you to the SVRA for hosting such a great event!! And last, but certainly not least, we want to thank our long suffering and tormented family which follows us from race track to race track allows us to continue to do the racing thing………. |