Moroso Motorsports Park - West Palm Beach, FL

The first final round and first victory for the new RX-8 and the first for the team since 2003 in the "All Motor" car were certainly not anticipated but in racing, a win is a win.

In addition to winning the event, we were able to post our best performance to date. During second round qualifying, we ran an 8.58 ET at 159.17 MPH with a "sick" car. (The smoke was not from the RX-8)

How did we get to this point? Back in April at this same track, we showed the nation that the driver and the car was not prepared nor at the level we needed to be. Reluctantly following the spring Englishtown event, we took the advice of fellow racers. That advice was take a step back and learn the car, turn the power down, sort out our turbo choice, our chassis, test and test to get comfortable with the car and then rejoin the series, time permitting.

We did just that. We took a step back to regroup and we felt like this event was the time to rejoin the series and start making rounds to gain the experience.

Thanks to our sponsors for their continued support

Although the tune was off, we were able to make several passes with the car going straight down the middle of the hot and slippery track. This was very comforting to know going into qualifying.
After 3 qualifying rounds on Saturday, the last of which was after dark, we ended up in the #2 qualifying position much to our surprise. This felt good and we were thinking, what would tomorrow bring?

I have to say that at this time, the level of competition was not as I had anticipated it to be due to the mid season rule changes that affected the two front runners in the points, Paul and Justin. Hopefully, we will all see these two guys return to the superior level of performance so we can race hard and I thank them both for their encouragement and support. (They were both rooting for me in the final)

Because of our tuning issues, we knew going into the elimination rounds on Sunday was going to be nerve racking. The first round was against the Subaru and was an easy victory. The second round, my opponent was disqualified (not sure why) which gave me a bye run. I decided to run hard anyway in an attempt to have lane choice for the final. We ran another 8.5 which did give us lane choice.

Prior to the final, I richened up the tune because I thought it was lean in the bye run and bumped up the boost just a little in an attempt to "help" edge out my fellow RX7 competition and beat him on the tree. An all Mazda final.

 

As luck would have it, I did win with the better RT even though we both had "sick cars" It turns out that the changes I made the tune worse but we did learn (thanks to Paul) what our problem was and believe me, it will be corrected prior to Las Vegas September 9-10, 2005.