Putnam Park Recap 5-15 & 5-16

This past weekend was a crossover event for the Midwest and Great Lake Region NASA regions. The event was held at Putnam Park, just outside Indianapolis.

Thursday afternoon we headed over to St. Charles, IL where the car had the cage painted and a new roof installed on the car. I will post some pictures of that at a later date.

Friday was a test and tune day that we attended to get practice and help set the EVO up for the competition days to follow. Friday ended up being the best weather day of the weekend.

Progress was made on Friday and by the last session of the day a lap time of 1:19 had been ran.

The same set of Hoosier tires were on the car that had been used at the first race down at Gateway. It was doubtful they would last the full weekend so a new set was also brought with us.

Saturday we arrived at the track to find it overcast and cool. The first session of the day went well and we could see that there was some very difficult competion in the class. One of our competitors was the NASA TTS National Champion in 2009. He showed up with a new motor setup built over the winter that is even more potent than last years setup.

In the second session of the day I had a difficult time getting a clear lap without being held up. After that session we were in 4th place out of 6 cars in the class.

Unfortunately just as we went out for our third session of the day it began to rain, which meant nobody was going to beat the times we had put down in the second session of the day.

The 1:19.916 that the EVO turned in the second session was beat out of third place by the Pure Tuning Civic that turned a 1:19.748 lap.

Sunday morning once again was an overcast and cool start to the day. The weather forecast called for chances of rain off and on all day.

After making a few adjustments to the JRZ shocks, the first session netted a 1:18.650 lap time, nearly 1.5 seconds better than on Saturday. This time was good enough to hold third place until the third session. Once again the Civic edged us out later on in the day to steal back third place. The tires on the EVO were going away and just didn't have enough grip left to turn a better lap. There wasn't enought time in the afternoon between sessions to get the new tires mounted and so we had to settle for 4th place once again for the class. Overall on Sunday we were 7th out of 37 cars there.

Thanks to my Father and Aunt who helped out with the crew duties and kept the car ready for each session. I could not do it without your help and support!!

Next weekend is the first event of the season that the Eclipse will run with the Midwestern Council of Sports Car Clubs high speed auto-x series. We will be running at the Autobahn Country Club. This week will be busy getting things ready for that event.