Morning arrived way too early, and I woke up in one of those still drunk/hungover states. I had to hustle over to the site because my work assignment is covering the ESP and BSP classes for Sportscar, and of course, they ran in the first heat. It took some coffee and cigarettes, but I managed to get there in one piece.
Sam Strano was awesome, and came out of day one with a small lead. In BSP, the Tak/Lieber car looked unstoppable - just amazingly quick compared to everything in the class. Our local Driver of the Year, Justin Rothermel, was off the pace in 10th place.
The surface was really dusty in the first heat, and while a line developed, the times really never came down all that much as the day went on. The Left course is very hard to see from the spectator area, so I didn’t really get to see any of the action over there, which meant I missed Eric and Randy completely. I watched most of the heats on the Right course.
The condition of the surface is really having an impact on the results. It appears to be especially bad for any cars on slicks, and to favor AWD cars. This is changing the balance of power within several classes, and is making the PAX results very strange. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few years.
By the afternoon I had recovered somewhat from my debauchery and vowed to tone it down a little the next few days. I did pop over to Baby Dolls for a little bit in the evening, but I only had one beer and then headed for home at midnight. I met my co-driver Sam - seems like a nice guy with a rather twisted sense of humor, so we got along great.
There seems to be a lot of interest in the FPL class this year.