The "black lake shootout" took place in perfect weather this past weekend. Despite a little more than an hour delay each day (Sat to finish setting up the course after a heavy rain on friday made it near impossible to finish earlier, and a 7:00 AM Sunday sunrise made a 6:00 AM opening of coursewalks a highly over optimistic schedule) aproximately 225 competitors got 4 runs each day on the Roger Johnson designed courses. The courses were about 55-60 sec each and HUGE!!! about 1/2 again the size of each of this years nationals courses. They were both fun and challenging, heavily rewarding the correct line and patience. The perfect surface made the grip very predictable.
Saturday was the better course for our Solstice and Donna drove the wheels off it to post a time that put here in 10th in Pro class out of 30 drivers, and would have placed her 0.9 sec in the lead in AS open.
Sunday's course wasn't as kind to us as we were on the rev limiter in at least 4 places, but too late or not in a good place for a shift. We probably should have loosened the rear on sweeper exit a bit as well. I wish we could run at more venues with good sized sweepers so we can get a better feel for what fine adjustments we should make in similar situations. Had a similar issue on day 2 at nationals. Donna ended up 16th in Pro out of 35 and I was 19th.
Jim F spanked the entire field in his "cheater- should be in B/S" ITR

taking top place in Pro and FT PAX for the event! Congrats on some outstanding driving Jim!
I ca't wait to hopefully be able to run a similar size course at ACU4 in a couple weeks.