Kershaw race report

[carnut169]

Hello all. Just wanted to report on the race this weekend... all in all it went very well. Finished 1st Sat, 2nd Sunday. Here is a write up by a fellow racer:

The purple party lights sparkled all weekend at beautiful CMP. There was some great 2 liter racing at the Memorial Monster Double hosted by the Central Carolina Region. CCR did a great job of enabling folks to get in a practice, a qualifier, and a race on both days.

Saturday's Race:
Sean O'Connell wins in FC.
Daniel Dobson 2nd in FC.
Mike Eakin wins in CFC.
Rich Latera 2nd in CFC.
Michael Montfort 3rd in CFC.

Sunday's Race:
Chuck Cecil wins in FC.
Sean O'Connell 2nd in FC.
Daniel Dobson 3rd in FC.
Mike Eakin wins in CFC.
Rich Latera 2nd in CFC.
Michael Montfort 3rd in CFC.

The Frog will have to post the real results when he gets back to the swamp.

Friday Night's party was hosted by Antiques on the Square in Marietta Georgia. Great burgers, and funny scenes of watching the Frog team try to unload in the middle of the night. Especially when they plugged in their race trailer to the track power and all the lights went out in a 3 mile radius.

Saturday Night's party was hosted by Purple Frog Racing in conjunction with OhSchmidt Productions (www.ohschmidt.com), and Antiques on the Square. Obviously a bigger party as all participants were on site and locked into the facility. South Carolina had repaired their power grid and the purple lights were sparkling. Dewars and tequilia poured in over abundance. Ms. Frog showed up with many fine steaks to grill. Jim showed up with a ton of new potatoes and the feast was on.

Many colorful racing stories developed as the weekend unfolded. Cecil was the fastest FC in his newly renovated 96VD. Unfortunately during Saturday's race as Sean O'Connell was right on his diffuser, Chuck's left rear suspension bent and he had to retire. Ending a great battle for the spectators to watch. It appeared that some sort of debri hit one of Chuck's lower links while at speed. Chuck came back on Sunday to win. But he wasn't done hitting things. The whole field got a laugh on the warmup lap as a very confused squirrel met his demise as he stood in the center of the track trying to decide which way to dodge 30 zig-zagging open wheel racers. Chuck didn't know he had hit the poor squirrel but the rest of the field did. Chuck's rear suspension survived that impact and he went on to dominate the race, as O'Connell got stuck in traffic long enough to loose touch.

In CFC, Eakin took Buford ('88 Reynard) out in Saturday's qualifying session and blasted through the CFC track record, and basically set the tone for the weekend. Rich Latera had been out of his Swift for 7 months, so he spent the weekend coming back up to speed. We will see more of him as the summer heats up and he gets faster and faster.

Michael Montfort was having a blast all weekend. On his first trip to CMP he discovered he loves the track and improved all weekend. Always smiling, he was glad to have turned the corner and left 2002 season blues behind.

As the sun set Sunday, all the open wheel guys loaded whole cars in their trailers and drove off smiling into the sunset.