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Thu Mar 28
This race would be Willis Woerheide's second in the TA2 car, and this is his home track. Edward would again be running with Willy in the Pro-Am and Alan will be running with NASCAR's Mike Skinner in Sam Lacomte's Captain America.
Edward ran only three laps on Thursday and his one hot lap was a 1:32, which I thought good enough for the Pro-Am pole. Alan ran four sessions, and with each session we made improvements on Sam's hideous handling car. The car hadn't been run in years and had never run since a major wreck and repair job done by a dummy.
At the end of the day we welded a galvanized fence post over the wimpy front sway bar and made new shock bushings for the front shocks. There were no bushings in the shocks, and the suspension could move a lot before the shock knew anything was up. The rear end had to be lifted at least an inch, but we couldn't get to that by the time we knocked off at 2000.
Fri Mar 29
Willis's car had a malfunction on the grid and didn't make the first practice session. In the next session, he was only 24th, and was uncharacteristically unhappy when he got out of the car. Fortunately, that was the last we would see of that from Willis, as he was as happy as he could be the next two times he got out of the car.
We worked until after dark at the track getting ready for qualifying. We missed the charity dinner which was held at the BBS factory next door. The dinner was to raise money for the charity, and we felt like one of us should go, so we sent Alan. When he got there, there was not even standing room, but the buffet was still alive and it was catered by Carraba's. He ate and went back to the trailer.
Mike Skinner had brought some boys from his shop and Sam took the car over to his trailer and put Mike in charge of the car prep, but he wanted Alan to supervise the work!
Sat Mar 30
Today started with at 0800 Group 6 Qualifying that would determine the pole for the Pro-Am race at 1230. Klutt got the Pole with a 1:30.6, as Edward had a flat (but still ran a 1:31.0). So Klutt starts on the pole, Edward second and Alan would start third.
Alan had Skinner's crew overhaul the rod end coupling between the spring and trailing arm, and that raised the rear end an inch. Unfortunately they had already cut Sam's fenders to allow the tire to go through without raising the rear end. No one would get a chance to test the new setup before Alan did in the race!
The driver's meetings started at 1030, which was followed by pomp and ceremony. The race was for a kids charity, and the kids were orphaned military kids . Alan autographed a lot of T shirts this morning!
Edward had Klutt in the first turn but let him go. Alan was solidly in third. Edward passed for the lead on lap 3 and Alan came in, as had been requested by car owner Sam. Edward extended his lead to almost the full straightaway, and then came in only to be slowed by Dave Roberts who adopted the 35 mile an hour pit speed all the way down the hill, a 1/4 mile from the speed limit zone. By the time Edward got to his pit, he had given up more than the lead he had on Klutt.
Willy got in and made one lap before he reported the engine down on power and making a hell of a racket. He drove it that way a half a lap and then bypassed the pit entrance and stated another lap! We finally encouraged him to park the car and their race was over.
Klutt kept going to the cut off at 12 laps, as he knew Al was quite a bit off his pace. Al took over with a 35 second lead over Mike Skinner, but Mike was running at least five seconds a lap faster than Al, and passed for the lead with one lap to go.
In TA2 final Qualifying, Willis was 16th, eight places better than he did in his first session.
 Left to Right, Peter Klutt, Alan Sevadjian, Mike Skinner, Willy T. Ribbs
Sun Mar 31
All that was on the schedule was the TA 2 race at 1400. Willis did great and finished 9th. His whole wonderful family was there, and they were all pretty much euphoric.
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