July 18-19, 2009 | By Brian Mertz
OK, sure … Fontana can be hot in mid-summer. And it was, like over 100 degrees by early afternoon.
But a little heat didn’t slow down the racers at VARA’s Golden State Challenge, July 18-19 at the Auto Club Speedway’s challenging and exciting high-speed “roval” course.
In fact, I think our tires reached racing temperature as we left the pre-grid. Anyway, everyone had a great time, and I sure appreciated my “Cool Suit!”
Flag races kicked off on Saturday with the annual Formula Car Enduro, won by a determined Steve Brown at the wheel of his Formula Mazda. Brown recovered from a mid-race off that dropped him from the lead into sixth place, rallying back to overtake polesitter Bill Modisette’s Zetec FF2000 and the Star Mazda of Dutch Schultz to win by almost 30 seconds in the 18-lap event.
Sunday’s Group 1 race for Formula Vees and small-bore production cars featured a clash of Caldwells in FV1. Dietmar Bauerle made relatively short work of Mark Fischer’s similar car to take the lead, which he never surrendered. But meanwhile, Kim Madrid was turning the fastest race lap hustling her Caldwell up from 14th spot on the grid to grab third from Lawrence Whittemore’s Zink on the next-to-last lap, and then she methodically hunted down Fischer to edge him out of second overall by just 0.02 seconds.
“Wings-and-slicks” cars in Group 2 were dominated from the start by Kenneth Davis in his FA Ralt RT-40, thundering off the pole to an easy 41-second winning margin over the Star Mazda of Case Montgomery. Tim Lamkin brought his FA2 Swift to the stripe third overall, while Dutch Schultz claimed fourth overall and second in Star Mazda.
Steve Link’s BS Datsun 510 started from the pole and turned the quickest race lap in Group 3, but unfortunately suffered a DNF after four laps. Chris Blasman’s rapid DPX Datsun 240Z took over the lead and held on to win ahead of strong challenges from Vincent Torres’ BS 510 and Bob Wass’ BS Alfa GTV – all three cars turning fast laps within 0.015-second of each other!
Behind the three leaders was a real barn-burner battle for CS honors, as the BMWs of Kyle Blasman, Scott Parsons and Ken Blasko passed and re-passed, ultimately finishing in that order.
Group 4’s Formula Ford contest offered a slightly too-exciting contest for the lead between Patrick Maynard’s CF1 Citation and Mark Wilson’s CF Crossle. Wilson was awarded the win after Maynard was penalized three laps for failing to report to black flag following a couple of off-pavement excursions. Tom Sabo’s Caldwell D9 took third overall and FF honors, while Roy Jones’ Winkelmann edged John Viggers’ Crossle by 0.3-seconds for second in FF.
An invited field of non-vintage racers contested Group 6, which was won by the Corvette Z06 of Christopher Ronson Jr., pursued by Vali Predescu in a Porsche 911 and Mickey Miller’s BMW M3.
The mid- and large-bore cars of Group 7 climaxed the weekend with a race dominated by the Trans-Am car of Bud Thurston, which managed to lap a field of very fast racing cars! Wayne Graham’s giant-killer BSM Mazda RX3 finished second, ahead of the dueling Corvettes of BPM winner Frank Manning and BP winner Brad Long.
- Brian Mertz
