Scarallo: Looking Back at Lime Rock and Forward to Mosport
Hello Again Everybody! Well Lime Rock has past and it was an eventful weekend for me and my Group A Racing team. We had some great success and some things bit us in the butt, but we are heading in the right direction, which is promising.
On Friday we ran into some problems with the ride height of the car. The car was bottoming out so much that it made me spin in both sessions. This held me back to getting a total of 8 laps on Friday when everybody else got about 40-50. My guys took care of that problem but sadly we were “behind the eight ball” and had to play catch up.
Saturday we had one practice session, qualifying, and race number one of the weekend. During the morning practice I knew my guys took care of my car and just put my head down on learning the track, and getting the car handling to my style. We ended that session in 10th only five tenths off the fastest time. This was a great jump for me and the team since we were 24th and 26th fastest on Friday! We made some adjustments to help the understeer in the car which seemed to be the common problem in the F2000 paddock. The changes helped and we jumped up into sixth in qualifying, only .210 off the pole.
In the first race I got a good clean start and jumped up from my sixth place starting position up to fifth with John Dole on my gearbox. I could not shake John Dole off at all but at the same time I would not let him by. About half way through the race the brake pedal started to get soft, and I had to back up my braking points. Due to that, John Dole finally got by on lap 18 and then a couple laps later, Al Guibord caught me and passed me aswell. So I ended up finishing 7th. I had mixed feelings about the results, it was great because it was my first top 10 and we had great pace. But at the same time it was a bit frustrating because I had 5th until the braking issue.
On Monday we got the braking fixed and we were ready for the second race of the weekend. In the morning qualifying we still battled under steer but had good pace. I was fifth until about 5-7 minutes left in the session, but then Matthew Inge bumped me to sixth so we went back out to try and go faster. Sadly I could not get any more out of it and a couple of more drivers bumped me down in the last minutes of qualifying. So within about 7 minutes I went from 5th to 9th. I was disappointed to get bumped like that but it made qualifying very intense and a lot of fun. But sadly that was the end of the fun for the weekend because we had a mechanical issue in the second race. It was frustrating because we started to have some good momentum going our way and then had this issue in the second race to totally take that away.
So the weekend had its ups and downs but I am looking forward to Mosport. I have always wanted to race at Mosport since I was about 7 years old when my brother first raced there and my Father and him came back ranting and raving about it. The track is flat out incredible and I am excited to race there. I really think that we can get some good results there in Mosport. I am starting to get a feel for these cars and really think that we can contend for podium finishes.