Das Race: My '97 M3/4/5

[Jake]

Spring Rumble at Summit Point

Another weekend, another personal best! 

I had a client meeting in Bethesda that ended at 3:15 PM on Friday. Left straight from there to get the trailer and head west to Summit Point. I've said it before, but this #EnclosedLife is the fucking best. There I am in dress clothes, letting my electric tongue jack do the work as it drops the trailer onto the F-150's hitch ball. Ten minutes of hooking things up and I was on the road. It rained all Friday afternoon and didn't taper off until partway through the night.

We woke up Saturday morning to dry conditions but a damp track. Thunder's warm-up session was second on the schedule so we ended up tip-toeing around for 20 minutes of "warm up" - AIM showed a best lap of like 1:46, lolz. A friend from MD came down with his Mk4 GTI, excited to do his first HPDE 1 weekend. The water pump shat the bed after his first session, so he ended up packing it in that evening and heading home 

Saturday's race was okay. I blew the start - got to T1 with the rest of the pack, had a lapse in concentration/aggression and by the time I regained it, the pack was a little far ahead and I caught out-of-class traffic. Finished 6th of 8.

Sunday's qualifying race went well, I had a nice aggressive start and shot past several competitors at T1 - find your gaps and take them, dammit! Finished second (of 3) in the qualy race. Beast of the East format meant I was racing Mark in his GTS2 BMW and some guy in a 350Z. The Nissan was slightly faster on the straights and I couldn't get by him in the corners, he had rookie stripes on the bumper and his situational awareness was not too hot yet, so I didn't want to risk anything. I left Mark in the d-u-s-t after that good start which felt awesome.

Sunday's race again saw me find a very good start. The first turn was busy but we all somehow kept it clean with no contact. I stayed ahead of Jeremy. Bill's gas pedal broke and he pulled off. Mark (black and red #88) had a decent lead on me due to that start - he got ahead of some out-of-class slowbois and pulled away - but I reeled him in and made a somewhat aggressive pass at T3. From there, I just worked to keep him away and it worked out. I was initially trying to catch Matt (gray E36) but the rain started to come in and my desire to push super hard faded a hair. I finished the race in 5th of 8 - but the bigger news is that I set the third-fastest lap of the GTS2 race and it was a new personal best. AIM data showed a 1:22.9 and NASA data showed a 1:23.0. Super super happy with that as I've struggled to get out of the 24's for a while now.

The car is running well so I'm going to focus on some cosmetic updates before and after Hyperfest. Onward!