Texas Trifecta

Texas Trifecta at Circuit of the Americas and my Spec E30 debut here in Texas. Very nice facility but in this environment, not the most specter friendly.



Friday practice and qualifying was spent primarily learning the track. It took a little while to pick up but out of the five car Spec E30 field, I was able to get the pole ahead of Allen Garner. Turn 1 at the start was very interesting. I was able to make it through clean and break away from the pack for the win. This was the only race my camera worked for, and was mostly driving around by myself.



Texas Trifecta- Sunday Enduro Start from Kelly Childress on Vimeo.





Saturday consisted of practice and two sprint races with qualifying set by fast lap of the prior race. It ended up being a cutthroat back and forth with Allen. It was a great race... I ended up finishing in second place just behind Allen, but did set the fast lap at 2:47:001 and the pole for the feature race. After the race, I weighed the car to get a baseline now that I had lost weight (Driver @ 165 pounds). It was the following with a full tank of gas and full cool suit cooler in the trunk:



2720 Pounds



LF: 772 RF: 691

LR: 630 RR: 622

Front- 1463 53%

Rear- 1252 46%

The second sprint race was the feature race. The first few laps were once again back and forth with Allen. My tires began to fall off and after a pretty scary slide coming onto the front straight I backed off a bit and focused on not crashing the car. Post race, the entire Spec E30 class was impounded. I came in at 2697 pounds (within the 5 pound variance), but unfortunately Allen ended up being DQ'd for being underweight. Not a great way to win a race.



For Sunday, there was a 1 hour endurance race. While I had a set of new tires, I didn't want to break them in for the enduro and ended up going out on the old RR's to continue to learn how they behave as they wear. I ended up cording two of them in the race, but was able run a 2:50.37 on the second lap. I believe they do not like drift angles as high as the RA-1's. While my camera broke, I did get the first couple of laps:





Texas Trifecta- Sunday Enduro Start from Kelly Childress on Vimeo.

Location:Circuit of the Americas