TC America: Sonoma, Race 2

It is time for race number two of the weekend here at Sonoma Raceway in the California wine country, for SRO TC America.  The touring cars powered by Skip Barber Racing School began the season yesterday seeing Jacob Ruud, Kevin Boehm, and Carter Fartuch, win in every one of the classes.  Race two on Sunday is on deck and we join as always, Ryan Myrehn, Calvin Fish, and Amanda Busick, on commentary.  Jacob Ruud, a ten-time race winner in 2021.  Steve Cugliari seems to be his biggest competitor so far.  Ruud and Cugliari will race against each other the whole season.  Clay Williams, after issues with the Mini yesterday, seems to be in good shape.  Clay Williams was focused solely on fastest lap of the motor race to set the grid for race two.

To recycle the electronics on the Mini, he had to drop below 30 miles an hour which on a racetrack, is extremely dangerous!  Yesterday's pole man, Steve Streimer, finished fourth in yesterday's race.  Clay Williams will have Kevin Boehm, another star driver from yesterday, will definitely go for it.  Mat Pombo and Mike LaMarra are next up on the grid.  Both L.A. Honda World cars are there.  Ken Fukuda and Jeff Ricca on the next row and then comes Nicholas Barbato in the GenRacer/Ricca Autosport Hyundai Veloster which is the sister car to his teammate and team owner, Jeff Ricca.  

Then comes Matthew Ibrahim.  Next row, Ruben Iglesias and Joey Jordan.  Joey remembers his dad, Joe, who was a massive part of the TC America community.  He was part of the radio stream and the podcast for the series.  We have 36 cars in the field today with front wheel drive and rear wheel drive cars, with several different engine displacements as well for TCX, TC, and TCA.  More manufacturers will be coming into TCX to join BMW.  We ought to watch Barbato and Ricca in the Hyundai's as well.  It is early doors for the development of the Hyundai.  Gresham Wagner and Spencer Bucknum will be two other young lions to look out for.  Devin Anderson, Christian Perocarpi, and others.  This field is stacked with talent.

Here comes the field through turns 11 and 12.  Tom Hansing waves the green flag and we're off.  Ruud starts well and poor old Stephen Cugliari didn't get the start he wanted as they head for turn one for the first time.  Cugliari runs wide onto the grass!  Can he recover it?  He was in way too deep.  Man oh man.  Cold tires.  The nemesis of every racing driver on a start.  Here's the TC field starting their race.  Now, Stephen Cugliari has rejoined the race just in front of Garrett Adams as we watch the start for the TC cars.  Kevin Boehm to the inside of Clay Williams through the second turn.  Fukuda has had a good start too.

TCA cars are now off and running as well.  Carter Fartuch in the lead from pole position and he has Gresham Wagner bearing down on him.  A big twitch in the middle of the pack and some contact to be aware of.  Will make a note of that.  Spencer Bucknum saves it!  Christian Pericarpi is also looking racy from the off.  Kevin Boehm leads overall, and we are looking at the scrap for third, fourth, fifth, and sixth places.  Ken Fukuda, Mat Pombo, Jeff Ricca, and Mike LaMarra are all in this scrap.  It is good to see Ken Fukuda get into a good spot to race.  Mat Pombo passes Fukuda and has Jeff Ricca right behind.  

Mike LaMarra slides off the road and, thud, into the barrier.  It looks like he will be able to continue.  Hopefully there is not much damage to the L.A. Honda World entry.  The tires are still cold, the Pirelli P Zero's.  Nicholas Barbato is behind and he wants to make a move on LaMarra but LaMarra has junk all over his tires.  In the meantime, Kevin Boehm is bang on the money but has Clay Williams right on his six as Jacob Ruud leads by a second over Lucas Cattania.  Garrett, followed by Cugliari, and Steve Streimer.  Christian Pericarpi in one of three Mini entries here at Sonoma.  He picks up a place.  Side by side stuff here, look, for the lead.  Gresham Wagner in the Subaru vs. the Honda for Skip Barber Racing School and Carter Fartuch.  Wagner moves up to top of the shop in TCA.

Gresham Wagner had medical issues that delayed his motor racing career.  A major surgery and a lengthy stay in the hospital to recuperate.  But now, he has come back even stronger.  Oh no!  Commentators curse, it strikes again!  Just as we are singing praises of the man, Gresham Wagner is in trouble!  Too much speed through turn nine and Wagner goes off the road and gets grass and assorted clag all over his tires as well!  Spencer Bucknum passes and so does Wagner's TechSport Subaru teammate, Devin Anderson.  Wow.  Wagner side by side with Anderson and speaking of side by side, there are battles all over the shop, and one is in TCX!

Ruud and Catania again!  Everyone in the TC field has eaten their Wheaties this morning.  Garrett vs. Cugliari.  Cugliari dives in late on the brakes!  He lunges and completes the pass.  Cugliari has splitter damage on the right front corner, though.  That could compromise his aerodynamics.  Lucas Cattania has the Crowdstrike Fastest Lap of the motor race thus far.  Jacob Ruud knows he has more competition this year and we have seen a bunch in just five and a half minutes of race two for TC America.  Jacob Ruud, Lucas Cattania, Stephen Cugliari, Colin Garrett, and Steve Streimer, the top five.

Cugliari is regrouping to try and get his race on track, no pun intended.  In TC racing, Kevin Boehm has Clay Williams all over him.  Boehm will have to use every trick in the book to fend off Williams' challenges.  Clay Williams has a sticker on the side of that JCW Mini that says Donate Life.  His mother is going through health woes right now.  It is an organization for being an organ donor.  That helps save lives.  Clay Williams is based on the west coast and knows Sonoma Raceway.  Kevin Boehm from Ohio, but he too knows this track as well from SRO and SCCA Runoffs competition.  Gresham Wagner is back in the picture and now, he is trying to monster Carter Fartuch for position.  

Wagner though, he has the pace for sure.  Fartuch leading the TCA class now but Gresham Wagner is really stepping up to the plate.  Wagner also raced the SCCA Runoffs here at Sonoma in 2018.  That is the amateur road racing national championship races every fall that rotates between different circuits every year.  Joey Jordan at the wheel of the #70 Mazda 3 TC for FTG Racing, he has his hands full with Nicholas Barbato.  Good to see the Mazda running so well.  Joey Jordan is running well and honoring his dad, Joe who passed away over the weekend.  A dozen members of the family gave the command to start engines for yesterday's TC America race here at Sonoma.

Carter Fartuch and Gresham Wagner are still fighting each other hard with only ten minutes elapsed.  In his day job, Fartuch is an instructor with the Skip Barber Racing School in addition to being a driver.  He pays it forward teaching people how to race cars.  Corner speeds at turn seven on the AWS Race Vision, tells us that Jeff Ricca and Kris Valdez are fastest at 55.3 miles an hour through the turn.  Valdez driving the #09 which is the second TC entry for DRS & Garagistic.  That is a BMW, an M240iR.  Valdez is followed on the speed chart by Stephen Cugliari in the #57 BMW M2 CS Racing for Accelerating Performance.  

After that, we have Olivia Askew in the second of the four Fast Track Racing BMW M2 CS Racing cars, and then the Mini of Christian Perocarpi for MINI JCW Team.  Cugliari and Askew run 54 miles an hour even through the turn and Perocarpi at 53.9 miles an hour.  Turn seven is the tight hairpin at the end of the drag strip.  The BMW cars are all rear wheel drive while everyone else has front wheel drive.  There is definite parity between the three classes and the cars, as well as having loads of mechanical grip around the circuit.  Williams hanging tough as Barbato passes Jordan as well as Ruben Iglesias and Mike LaMarra also wants a bite of the cherry.

Joey Jordan is really having to push.  Ah.  Lead change in TCA and Gresham Wagner passes Carter Fartuch.  Wagner slides deep to the inside into the apex of turn four.  He has also been really attacking The Carousel.  Kevin Anderson and Techsport Subaru are based at Virginia International Raceway and SRO America will be racing there in mid-June on Father's Day weekend.  Mat Pombo is third.  Carter Fartuch is still being challenged as we have just 25 minutes left before the checkered flag.  The tires will start squirming at around the 15 minutes to go mark.  Kevin Boehm is keeping Clay Williams at a safe distance.

Whoops.  I misspoke.  Spencer Bucknum is the man catching the top two in the TCA class.  Mat Pombo is gaining on the TC leaders ajd he is eating into the margin of Clay Williams, just a tenth behind the Mini driver.  In a rear-wheel-drive car like the BMW, the tires are only turning, while the front wheel drive cars, the smaller automobiles, they are getting the power to the ground to propel the automobile.  The Honda and the Mini rely more on their front Pirelli P Zero tires.  The TCX BMW's are rear wheel drive.  The Mini, the Honda, and the Hyundai, are all front wheel drive.  We are seeing many customer cars on the grid but there are some home tuned specials as well.  However, turnkey cars are very popular and easy to run and use.

There are loads of the M2 CS Racing cars around the world in different championships.  Joseph Catania has dropped back.  So, trouble in paradise for the #24, the first of the Rigid Speed TCX BMW's.  Lucas Catania is second and just off the lead.  Running fourth in TCX we see #44 Colin Garrett, #30 Steve Streimer, and #54 Garrett Adams.  Rooster Hall Racing followed by HARD Motorsport, and yet another of the Fast Track Racing cars, of which there are four.  All of them are right in the picture with just a tad over 20 minutes to go in this second race.

These boys are set to encounter TC traffic.  Up ahead, one of the Mini's for JCW Team.  This is the #62 in the hands of Canadian P.J. Groenke.  Groenke has never driven an orange Mini in SRO but his first pro win was in an orange Mini in Canada.  Groenke stretches his budget and makes multiple sponsorships go a long way to fulfill his dreams as a race car driver, his ambitions as a driver.  Groenke found a way to make the border crossings work since they were such a king size headache during the height of the global pandemic while most drivers north of the border sat it out in 2020 and 2021.  In TC, Kevin Boehm is just barely keeping Clay Williams behind him.

Things have been tooing and froing for these guys for a wee while.  Boehm and Williams have gapped Pombo.  Boehm's Honda Civic seems to have a broken exhaust pipe bracket and that could also be the case for Ken Fukuda's car.  Fukuda lives and breathes motor racing, sleeping on sofas, working three jobs a week.  He has also raced in Germany at the Nurburgring, and in Japan, following the dream.  Adam Roberts, team manager for the Skip Barber Racing School team jokingly said looking after the Pirelli tires really begins after the second lap of one of these races.  Driving styles have to change to save the tires so they are not knackered.  

Sonoma is known for tire degradation.  Same thing as being told about saving fuel to the end of the race.  Boehm managing his tires while Pombo has dropped back having used his tires up.  On fuel save, the fuel gauge tells you where you are, but with tires it is all about what you feel in the seat of your pants as a driver.  On a doubleheader weekend, what can you use from the first race to the second race that you learned?  The TCX battle has Steve Streimer all over 21-year-old Colin Garrett from Elmo, Virginia.  Garrett is a stock car racer who has run at the South Boston Speedway in South Boston, Virginia, run the NASCAR truck and Xfinity Series and has done short track stock car racing in Canada as well.

He is a race winner is Steve Streimer.  He is from Portland, Oregon, and has won in class at the Rose Cup Races.  He was a Trans Am Rookie of The Year in TA3 in 2015.  He started at the Ford Performance Racing School at Utah Motorsports Campus in Tooele, Utah.  With 15 minutes on the board, Garrett leaves the door open for Streimer.  Adams as well, is coming and making the pass.  Garrett Adams and Steve Streimer both pass successfully.  Turn three here at Sonoma is the highest elevation point on the road and then you plunge downward the rest of the way.  Don't overdo corner entry into turns three and four.  They pass the TCA entry of Sally McNulty.  McNulty ran top five yesterday and she is sixth today so far and will keep digging running with VCMG, Victor Gonzalez Motorsports.  

Jacob Ruud still leads overall just ahead of Lucas Catania by 3.5 seconds.  Catania still holds fastest lap but has the deficit to make up to Ruud.  Cugliari third, but is half a second down on Ruud.  Cugliari still has a tweaked front end corner.  He ran four races in 2021 and won three of them and was the thorn in the side of Jacob Ruud the whole way.  Catania did not get any favors from Carter Fartuch in the Honda.  Fartuch has dropped behind Gresham Wagner by five and a half seconds!  Whoa.  Fartuch just wants points and a podium spot.  He had a mid-season stretch that put him in contention for the title.  Kevin Boehm in the meantime, leads the TC class.

In TC, Boehm in the Honda has built a small cushion over Williams in the Mini.  Mat Pombo, another Honda driver is third.  Olivia Askew in TCX is behind Pombo.  Good to see her back for a full season campaign.  Olivia Askew moved away from her dad's team at DXDT and is now racing with Fast Track BMW and has Bryan Sellers as a driver coach.  She did test her dad's GT3 Mercedes which could be in her future.  Boehm with the assistance of traffic has been able to clear away from Williams.  Clay Williams is experiencing the largest gap he has had throughout this motor race as we also take another look at Gresham Wagner, leading TCA in the Subaru BRZ for TechSport, car #21.  

Wagner attacking The Carousel, driving in hard over the top, letting the car wash out and hits the second apex bang on.  Techsport from Virginia and so is Gresham Wagner as he hails from Williamsburg.  Carter Fartuch, second in TCA after winning the race yesterday.  Spencer Bucknum has also run very well so far with Ryan Eversley helping him out and coaching him.  Eversley is a veteran in SRO racing.  He has driven for L.A. Honda World, and he drives for them in a different championship as well.  Eversley has also run with Rick Ware Racing in both NASCAR and in GT3 racing in another championship.  Jacob Ruud now leads by seven seconds and change over Lucas Cattania.

Wagner leads Fartuch by six seconds.  But Kevin Boehm somehow or other still is in front of Clay Williams.  Olivia Askew has driven 17 races thus far between 2020 and 2021 but had a few podiums along the way in TCX.  We look now at the #88 GenRacer Hyundai Veloster.  Team boss Jeff Ricca has a dual clutch Veloster which keeps the engine wound up and allows for quicker gearshifts.  In TCX, Adams passes Garrett for fifth in that class and in the overall.  Barbato is cutting 1:57 laps while his competition is down in the 1:58-1:59 range.  Ricca has the sister Hyundai in the top five, the team boss.  Stephen Cugliari too, he has held down a podium place, the final step on the podium in TCX.

Cugliari and company on this team are learning and the pace discrepancy is real trying to catch Lucas Catania and it seems that he is.  He is 2.8 seconds down.  Catania protecting while Cugliari is in attack mode.  No worries though for Jacob Ruud, eight and a half seconds to the good in TCX in the class lead and in the overall lead.  A deeper field in 2022 in TCX.  Cattania and Cugliari are gaining experience and Ruud with one full season in the bag, he is really learning and getting used to tese cars.  One lap to go for Jacob Ruud going two for two.  But he will see it being nip and tuckl on the clock.  White flag is out.  Ruud leads the motor race by nine and a half seconds.  He has not been assailed today or this weekend.

Fast Track Racing, which used to be called Classic BMW in years past.  They have experience and great pedigree, running cars in TC America and GT4 America just the same.  Ruud to the hairpin at turn 11 for the final time.  Jacob Ruud, the Racine, Wisconsin native, breaks out the broom and sweeps the weekend at Sonoma Raceway!  Wow!  The rest of the field will be scratching their heads and wondering how to stop the BMW team from Fast Track Racing.  Kevin Boehm is going to sweep as well, the TCA champ and SCCA Runoffs national champ is victorious.  Gresham Wagner wins TCA as well in the Techsport Subaru.

GenRacer will get a top five.  Fourth for Ricca and fifth for Barbato as the two cars drag race across the finish line.  A couple more battles on the road as we see Mike LaMarra passing Ruben Iglesias.  Iglesias ahead of LaMarra.  Clean and green the whole way.  Ruud is on top again.

Overall/TCX: #1 Jacob Ruud     Fast Track Racing BMW M2 CS Racing

             TC: #9 Kevin Boehm    Skip Barber Racing School Honda Civic Type R TC

             TCA: #21 Gresham Wagner  TechSport Racing Subaru BRZ TCA

That is a wrap for TC America at Sonoma in the California wine country.  They will be headed to Ozarks International Raceway, the new track in Missouri, next month, and that is indeed where we shall meet them for the next races of the SRO TC America Championship as we leave you from the sunny skies and green grass of the rolling hills of Sonoma, California in the California wine country.  So long for now, everybody, and take care.

     

GT America: Sonoma, Race 2

We kick off your Sunday of SRO America action in the northern California wine country, at Sonoma Raceway, with race two for GT America.  This hearkens back to the way the old and beloved World Challenge championship used to be.  40-minute race, with a single driver at the wheel of the car.  Jason Daskalos dominated yesterday.  Steve Dinan also triumphed in GT4, for the first time in decades, winning an event.  Gorgeous weather is what we have again as we join Ryan Myrehn, Calvin Fish, and Amanda Busick.  The top three finished within a second of each other yesterday while today's starting grid is totally different.  Jason Harward on the pole in the Lamborghini as he had fastest lap in the race yesterday.  This is a tough, technical circuit that really is going to put a strain on the tires as we are set to race on Easter Sunday.  Happy Easter, everybody.  Steve Dinan has won a race for the first time in 25 years.

Dinan wants to win this race as he rolls off second in GT4.  We have SRO3 (GT3) with previous generation GT3 cars that have had their homologations expire.  Once again, we have a great field of cars.  Steve Dinan and Chris Cagnazzi are two cars we will be taking a good look at.  Tire degradation is always a major deal at Sonoma because of the low grip circuit.  We have seen the track getting rubbered in.  40 minutes in cool weather this Sunday morning.  Tire temp early on is a major deal.  Ride the brakes against the gas pedal to build temperature into the tires.  That is a great idea before we drop the hammer for racing.  

We've got a spinner at the very back of the grid through what looks like some oil dry, some cement dust.  Trouble there for one of the GT4 spec Toyota Supra's,  Jose DaSilva spins out and will get back on his way.  Cold tires will catch you out.  Behind the safety car the speeds are limited for a reason.  Thank goodness Dasilva did not hit anything.  Bryan Putt who won in class in GT4 yesterday, Gray Newell is there, Marco Radisic, who won on the St. Petersburg, Florida, street course.  Jason Bell, Hutton McKenna, there are a number of drivers who could win today.  Get the tires to bite into this abrasive old surface.  Turns two and three are very important and if drivers know this track, they will be in good shape.

Zelus Motorsports has an SRO3 and a GT4 car in the race today.  We have a great mix of cars and drivers today.  The new and old Porsche Cayman's are at the top of the tree and we have a melting pot of cars including the older GT3 entries.  Daskalos in the older Audi and the Callaway C7 Corvette of Mirco Schultis.  Who is comfortable with having a car that is a wee bit loose at the beginning?  Will cars that have more pace come to the fore?  Jason Daskalos and his whole team have been a quick study.  Jason Harward, the other Jason in the field, he is racing in both GT America and GT World Challenge America and so he gets extra track time.  

We will have a split start between SRO3 and GT4.  The GT4 contenders were confused by the split start and incurred penalties yesterday.  Let' not do that again.  SRO3 ready for a start with the Lamborghini on pole.  Jason Harward, the pole man.  Green flag!  Punch it!  Away we go!  Up the hill for the first time Jason Daskalos in the Audi wants to drop Mirco Schultis in the Callaway Corvette by the wayside already!  He is not messing around and says, "eat my dust, Mirco!"  Jeff Burton in another Lamborghini gives poor old Schultis the same treatment and the German Corvette ace is going to have to play a serious game of catch up.  Well, well, well.  Steve Dinan will get a massive jump in GT4.  

Chris Cagnazzi in the Mercedes gets tagged by Jason Bell in the Aston Martin.  Chris Cagnazzi with a repaired Mercedes AMG GT4 and a new part of the tail in a different color, he is going to have a fight on his hands.  Dropping into The Carousel for the first time of asking, Harward leading the motor race ahead of Daskalos and Jeff Burton.  In the background, look, George Kurtz is already having a bite of the cherry trying to find his way around Mirco Schultis in that beautiful Callaway Corvette.  Daskalos is monstering Harward.  The Jason and Jason show is on again.  Daskalos will not allow Harward to scamper away.

Whoops!  A spin there, through The Carousel for the #69.  Todd Coleman aboard the second TGR Smooge Racing Toyota Supra GT4.  Aha.  We saw Coleman team up with Aaron Telitz for a great showing in race one of Pirelli GT4 America yesterday.  More spinners.  Schultis has rotated the Callaway Corvette.  It looks like he may have been tagged by George Kurtz who was right on Schultis' six and applying the blowtorch.  Schultis is trying to point the Callaway in the right direction.  This is in the chicane at turn nine.  As the race goes along, Mirco Schultis gains speed.  He is probably on cold tirs.  The GT4 fight is hot and heavy as we see Steve Dinan has been caught by Ross Chouest.  Poor old Dinan is dropping like a stone.  He may have mechanical woes with that CarBahn with Peregrine Racing Audi R8 LMS GT4 Evo.

A little contact there, Gray Newell roughing Dinan up a wee bit.  Yikes.  Coexist with your other competitors and give each other space.  Marco Radisic, meanwhile, has ducked to pit lane aboard the #22 SRQ Motorsports BMW M4 GT4.  Radisic in trouble again, who won on the streets of St. Petersburg.  Sean Whalen at Zelus Motorsports has moved up seven places to the GT4 lead ahead of Chris Cagnazzi and Jason Bell.  Bryan Putt sends it around the outside for a pass.  Replay of the start, Cagnazzi did not control the start well enough and Steve Dinan poked his nose through.  So, the marshals and Race Control will be taking a good hard look.  Hutton McKenna in one of the Porsche Cayman's is moving up while we see some damage to the #21 Toyota Supra in the hands of Nick Shanny.  That is the first of the TGR Accelerating Performance cars.

More drama as Elias Sabo is high sided on a curb aboard the #8 GT4 Aston Martin Vantage run by Flying Lizard Motorsports.  A frantic start to race two at Sonoma as Harward leads Daskalos by 7/10ths of a second.  Ross Chouest has gone by Sean Whalen in GT4 and now, Adam Adelson is going to poke his nose into this scrap.  He makes a pass aboard the Premier Motorsports Porsche Cayman, car #120.  Rob Holland is going to have a bit of the cherry as well.  The deck is being shuffled indeed.  Game over for Steve Dinan.  He has pulled to the side of the road and taken his helmet off.  A tech issue for the #930 Audi.  So, it could be game over and Steve will be in his civvies watching the rest of the race from the pit lane.

Full Course Yellow with the stranded Audi on course needing to be rescued.  So, the gap between Jason Harward and Jason Daskalos is now nil.  Harward ahead of Jason Daskalos, Jeff Burton, George Kurtz, and Justin Wetherill.  We have three Jason's in this motor race.  Elias Sabo is still stranded and needing rescue, and oh my goodness.  Heavy damage to the front of the Aston Martin of Gray Newell.  Wow.  That car will need a trip to the panel beaters.  Gray Newell now down in 18th in GT4.  The front grille is caved in, and the bonnet has been nearly completely ripped off.  Gray Newell was fifth in points last year and won at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in race two.  That is the car they are also using for SprintX.  Their other cars got stuck on a cargo ship after racing in Dubai with Creventic in January and have not come back yet.

They got put on the wrong ship and have not returned, and so the team is compromised as far as cars and spare parts.  Maybe they can fix the car in two hours before we see them in the GT4 America race a wee bit later on.  Ross Chouest and Chouest Povoledo Racing had the same problem yesterday and it is a double-edged sword running two classes with two different entries.  Jason Bell is moving up well into third after starting eighth while Hutton McKenna has moved from fifth to second.  McKenna ran Porsche Cup in 2021 and is back in there this year.  McKenna Porsche were supporters of Alex Job Racing years ago and now they are back with their iconic livery of white and yellow with red lettering.  We look at AWS Race Vision and the overall top speeds.  Fastest of all is George Kurtz at 138 and a half miles an hour followed by Jason Daskalso at 137.3, Jason Harward at 136.7, 135.4 for Jeff Burton, and 133.5 for Justin Wetherill.

The fast speeds are achieved up the hill into turn one.  Early doors yet, but we could see speeds climb in the last half hour of the action here today.  Justin Wetherill is new to this series in SRO but he is a veteran in Ferrari Challenge and won the Coppa Shell Am class championship in 2020 and was third in 2021.  At CarBahn, Steve Dinan slowed for a yellow and he got divebombed by other cars.  Mirco Schultis spun of course and he is clawing his way back.  Jason Daskalos has had a good start.  Jason is a restaurant owner and has a restaurant called Vintage who does a big cookout which was extra special last night after he won.

Jason is not thinking about food right now.  He wants a sip of the champagne on the podium once again should he win this motor race.  We are set to go back to green and the tires are warm enough to maybe start getting clag on them.  Scrub the front tires so they respond when you hit the accelerator.  The brakes are used to generate the heat and weaving back and forth cleans the tires, so they have more traction.  Flat left rear tire, and a bit of contact as poor old Bryan Putt is stranded out on the circuit.  So, he has had a mixed bag this weekend so far here at Sonoma having succeeded and podiumed in GT4 America at Sonoma yesterday.

George Kurtz went on a tear and nearly won the race yesterday and he could be in the pound seats again.  He swept the weekend in GT America with pole and fastest lap here at Sonoma a year ago.  Kurtz finished second in class in the 24 Hours of Dubai for SPS Automotive Performance who he has also run for at the 24 Hours of Spa.  Plus he is racing in prototypes in the IMSA championship for the endurance races there.  Kurtz and Colin Braun have switched to Riley Motorsports compared to racing with the multi-car team at DXDT in years past.  Bill Riley and his pit crew have massive amounts of experience, while decades ago, they built their own race cars in sports cars and for a brief while, in IndyCar.

In modern sports car racing of all kinds, it has shifted away from the old garagiste mentality of building your own race cars, and more towards being provided with great equipment by a manufacturer, that you can only tweak on within very limited parameters.  These cars are all homologated.  Engineers and designers are very innovative, but now, the rules have to be restricted to have parity between the manufacturers, and so, you have to look deeper at details and car setups.  It is a darn shame that we will have the yellow's slicing their way into the pie of the time window of this 40-minute sprint as we look again at Chris Cagnazzi leading in GT4 in another Mercedes AMG, the GT4 spec model.  Cagnazzi has always campaigned Mercedes AMG's but is now doing so under the Cameron Racing banner.  

They had loads of success with Sean Quinlan in this series and also with Quinlan teaming with Greg Liefooghe in in GT4 America.  Now, the team has completely refocused as I believe Sean Quinlan (as we spoke about yesterday, is not retired, but taking a year away from motor racing).  Quinlan and company ran an M4 BMW in recent seasons.  Now the team is working under the AMG Mercedes flag.  Cagnazzi is teamed with Guy Cosmo who is a veteran driver and a good coach.  Cosmo worked with Steve Cameron in prototype racing years ago with Finlay Motorsports in the old Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series in their Daytona Prototype era.  So that was in the early to mid 2000s and into the 2010s if memory serves me right.

There is good chemistry, and the team is on home base here at Sonoma Raceway.  They have worked through setups as you need a completely different approach for a race at 9:30 A.M. in the morning as opposed to 4:00 P.M. in the afternoon as we saw yesterday.  22 minutes on the board.  The track conditions change in a major way depending on when you go out, especially on a test day, and you are always chasing the racetrack and you want the race track to come back to you.  Know when not to chase the track.  Have a good notebook on the circuits you are racing at and that will help in a major way.  Bringing back the idea of tire degradation, that whole deal might be tossed out the window because of this safety car scramble.  

Maybe we can reverse that theory and say, drivers might actually find a sweet spot on their tires right now when we get to the initial restart and maybe a lap after.  That is another of the catalog of scenarios.  So, lots of variables.  How are you going to slice the cake insofar as the first half and the second half of these races?  The tires degrade but the early performance of the tires is what you want to check into.  It is about the short run performance.  If this were an enduro like we see with SRO in Europe you want to play the long game, but not in this race.  Team boss and Team President at Zelus Motorsports, Tigh Isaac, is confident that Jason Harward has improved as a driver and that they can contend for a victory here in the final 20 minutes.

Harward is open to learn from his mistakes and keep pushing.  With Jeff Burton also on the team, he is a character.  He is fast, determined, driven, and has self-confidence.  Five cars on the team, which sees four GT3 cars and then the Aston Martin GT4 doing double duty in Sprint and GT America as well.  The team has grown tremendously between 2021 and 2022.  Tigh Isaac is a former speed skater for Team USA.  Speaking of speed, we are backmto green with less than 19 minutes to go.  George Kurtz gets by Burton and wants past Daskalos.  Kurtz almost does a bit of agricultural racing but keeps the AMG Mercedes on the road.  Daskalos is hanging on while we see Jeff Burton on the rebound trying for third spot.  Daskalos, chasing Harward, looks to the inside.  Nothing there.  Discretion the better part of valor for the time being.

Discretion?  Nope.  Valor, yes.  Daskalos has a lunge!  Not yet.  Rein it in.  Keep your powder dry.  Oh criminy.  Problems again, look at the uphill turns.  That's a Supra and a Cayman tangled up there.  Nick Shanny in the Toyota and who is the bloke in the Porsche who just drove away?  Let's rewind the tape and we can see Sean Whalen has spun his Aston Martin and come across right back into traffic!  Contact for the two other cars who go off the road in avoidance of Whalen's automobile.  It may be day done for Nick Shanny.  He has a broken toe link, a broken suspension.  So he will have to wait to go for it until the next weekend of racing coming up at the new Ozarks track in Missouri, next month, and you will hear more about that weekend of racing when this race is complete.

A local yellow for now with less than 18 minutes left on the board.  Harward and Daskalos may be leaving Kurtz for dead here.  Some penalties handed out by Race Control.  Todd Coleman must serve a drive through for jumping the initial race start.  Steve Dinan has a penalty too, but it is negated because he is out of the motor race.  Full Course Yellow, now.  Full Course Yellow.  In that earlier scrum we saw at the top of the hill, the other driver was Alain Stad aboard the #19 NOLASPORT Cayman GT4.  Safety car scramble.  Hutton McKenna has passed Chris Cagnazzi.  When we go back to green flag racing we shall have about ten minutes left on the board and it will be a sprint to the end of this one.

So, we continue under the safety car.  The rules of the starts and restarts are different as to when you can pull out of line and make a pass.  The polesitter should control that.  Jason Harward, for the time being, has set the Crowdstrike fastest lap at 1:41.497.  He is currently leading the motor race.  George Kurtz is a mere nine thousandths of a second slower.  Kurtz third in class and in the overall.  So, the Mercedes could be in with a real shot here just as Kurtz was yesterday.  Daskalos and Burton are in the fight.  Nick Shanny walks away from the car.  Shanny sharing with Terry Borcheller in SprintX competition.  Nick Shanny is retired from a successful business and is now being mentored by and learning from a legend like Terry Borcheller who is a two-time winner at the Rolex 24 at Daytona.  

Great to see Terry Borcheller back racing again.  Guy Cosmo and Chris Cagnazzi's crew were working on the car to get it ready for today's race after the GT4 wreck and Guy Cosmo says Cagnazzi was just an innocent bystander in the wreck yesterday.  Cosmo is hoping his teammate can bring it home on the podium.  You have to have a short memory as a racing driver.  Live, drive, have fun, make the car go fast.  Chris Cagnazzi has business and other racing commitments, so, they won't be in for the full 2022 campaign but we will see them a few times.  GT America has run on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida already.  After Sonoma, here is what is planned.

The series moves next to Virginia International Raceway, Watkins Glen in New York, the Nashville, Tennessee, street course, one race ending at sunset, going over the bridge, and then finishing out the season at Road America, Sebring, and Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  The fanbase is wide from young kids who have posters of these cars on their bedroom wall to older folks who have had successful businesses and have the capital and the wherewithal to buy one of the street going versions of these great sports cars.  Mirco Schultis, fifth in SRO3.  Daniel Keilwitz and Eric Curran have driven this car and now Mirco Schultis has the car in his hands.  Callaway Corvette C7 chassis number one which ran very successfully in Germany in the ADAC GT Masters championship.  There may be future GT3 customer Corvette's coming and we have seen Cadillac build a GT3 car before.

GT3 cars have more downforce but also more aerodynamic assistance and are more costly to run while GT4 has a tad less horsepower without the aero assistance, but the GT4 cars are more raceable and more drivable in many cases.  They are a good handling car, and they can follow other cars in a better manner.  We saw yesterday in Pirelli GT4 America an incredible finish.  It is a natural transition from a touring car to a GT4 car.  Under seven minutes remain.  Safety car lights off atop the Acura NSX.  Jason Harward should be ready to fend off the challenges of Jason Daskalos and George Kurtz, both.  Green flag.  Harward does get the jump over Daskalos.  

Hutton McKenna is the GT4 leader.  Here's a move!  Harward is going to press down the inside of Daskalos down the hill and into the turn!  Pardon me.  It is Daskalos looking inside of Harward.  Harward closes the door!  Daskalos looking for the undercut diving downhill again as they are headed for the Carousel.  George Kurtz inching forward has Jeff Burton on his back door.  Mirco Schultis, too, is nosing in with the Callaway Corvette and you know he wants by Burton.  This could be a five way fight for the victory.  Burton runs wide in the Lambo and Schultis goes to the inside!  Burton wants it.  It's a drag race.  Mid-engine Lamborghini vs. front engine Callaway Corvette.  

Burton deep on the brakes and Schultis tries coming back but is getting the door slammed in his face.  Harward making good his escape as Kurtz is monstering Daskalos for second place.  Schultis will soon have his hands full with Kyle Washington as well in the Porsche, the GMG car #032 which is another GT3 entry.  George Kurtz is out of contention.  He is serving a drive through penalty for jumping the first restart.  A bitter pill to swallow for the Riley Motorsports Mercedes team.  Kyle Washington, same penalty for the GMG Porsche boys.  This will shake things up in the final four minutes.  Meantime, in GT4, Hutton McKenna has run off like a scalded cat and so the battle for the podium will be Chris Cagnazzi vs. Jason Bell, and Ross Chouest.  

Adam Adelson lurking back there as well.  So, the fight is far from over.  Deary me.  Cagnazzi runs wide and Bell could slide right through the open door here.  While Cagnazzi and Bell scrap, Hutton McKenna says, "see ya later!" and is whistling off into the distance.  Bell wants it.  Cagnazzi slams the door in his face.  A slight touch in the exit of the turn.  Bell not forcing the issue.  Adelson on the outside of Chouest too, look, through the Carousel.  Adelson off in the dirt, and now he's vulnerable to Rob Holland making a move!  This is it.  The money is on the line in GT America at Sonoma!  Holland to the outside and Adelson had to give it up, going to the braking zone.

Holland is a wheel-to-wheel racing expert having raced years ago in the British Touring Car Championship.  So, he's a real scrapper.  Holland will have to do all he can now to fend off Moisey Uretsky's challenge too.  McKenna has lit the afterburners as Cagnazzi is not finished yet.  Holland wants by Adelson.  These two in identical cars, the Porsche Cayman GT4.  Holland is in the new 2022 spec car while Adelson has the older Cayman platform.  Adelson's team has a new Cayman but have reverted back to the old one after the new car suffered crash damage last time out on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida.  

Two-minute warning.  McKenna controlling GT4.  Harward now leads Daskalos in SRO3 by 1.8 seconds.  Burton is two seconds in-arrears to Daskalos.  Mirco Schultis in the Corvette runs fourth, half a second behind Burton's Lamborghini.  White flag this time by for Harward.  He has settled in and made hay while the sun shines has the Utah native, driving for Zelus Motorsports, also from Utah.  One lap to go until a possible first win.  Cagnazzi still fending off Bell and Chouest while Adelson and Holland continue to scrap too.  Cagnazzi will hold station and has settled into accepting his place in the final results.  Final lap of the motor race.

Schultis reeling in Burton for third.  This is for the final step on the podium.  Schultis will fight to the bitter end.  Burton holds on through the chicane as Jason Harward is going to win his first career race in GT America!  Wow!  No longer the bridesmaid!  Hutton McKenna will also score a first career win in the GT4 ranks at Wright Motorsports.  McKenna wins it!  

So, here are your winners in race two at Sonoma.

Overall/SRO3: #88 Jason Harward     Zelus Motorsports Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo

             GT4: #30 Hutton McKenna    Wright Motorsports Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS Clubsport

16 races in his career for Jason Harward and now he has won with a very consistent race car.  He's ready for more racing.  He would jump in the GT World Challenge car right now to run that race.  He controlled the race very well and had zero mistakes.  Zelus Motorsports has a massively bright livery on the car which is a trend across many of the cars.  For Hutton McKenna, he has been calm, cool, and collected, and raced another car at Long Beach, bringing the Cayman to Sonoma and the whole team made everything work out.

He is carrying on his family's legacy.  He will be a future champion perhaps.  So, this wraps up GT America race two at Sonoma and we will see them next at Virginia International Raceway in mid-June on Father's Day weekend.  So, more great racing to come then just a couple days before the official beginning of summer.  No GT America at Ozarks, but there is sure to be more great racing to look forward to.  See you in June at the legendary VIR.  More racing to come later today though, so for now, so long from Sonoma, but do not go anyplace.  There are more events coming up.  Stay tuned.

                

     

IMSA news (continued)

More news from the WeatherTech Championship.

Michelin at Long Beach 2022 Recap

IMSA Confirms CTMP Return on July 1-3

https://sportscar365.com/imsa/impc/imsa-confirms-ctmp-return-for-july-1-3/

Jeff Westphal's latest column.

WESTPHAL: Devil is in the Details

https://sportscar365.com/features/commentary/westphal-devil-is-in-the-details/

SRO America Saturday racing action

 

Relive and watch all the great racing you have just read about.  Here is the Saturday SRO America replay from Sonoma with Ryan Myrehn and Calvin Fish calling the action from the booth and Amanda Busick covering everything in pit lane.  

Pirelli GT4 America: Sonoma, Race 1

Welcome, everyone, to what will be the final race of the day on day one of the action here at Sonoma Raceway in the northern California wine country, the Sonoma valley.  Sonoma Raceway plays host to round one of the 2022 Pirelli GT4 America championship season.  This will be an hourlong race for the GT4 competitors.  The cars and stars are ready to begin their 2022 campaign.  No fewer than 42 cars are in the field, answering the bell for the season opener.  We join our commentators, Ryan Myrehn, Calvin Fish, and Amanda Busick.  With heavy hearts, we miss former driver Paul Terry who passed away over the offseason.  Our condolences to your family, Paul.  You have now taken the checkered flag in heaven.  Rest In Peace.  With the tribute to Paul Terry, we now go racing.  We have a massive field across the driver level dictated classes.  New and established teams are ready to go and we have a stacked field of fabulous drivers.

We join our pals on commentary, Ryan Myrehn and Calvin Fish, and in the pit lane, Amanda Busick, as always.  We are going to follow car #10 today.  This is the Fast Track Racing BMW M4 GT4.  Tim Horrell, one of the drivers, is paraplegic.  He is using a hand operated brake lever and has an paddle shifted gearbox.  Very cool story, teaming up with Trans Am veteran Raphael Matos.  Horrell and Matos have been working together after Tim was paralyzed in 2011 in a road car accident.  Tim is not at all the first driver with a disability to compete.  We look at drivers like Robert Wickens and Alex Zanardi who have also done so.  Special dispensation, and so, Tim Horrell will start both races.  Everyone supports this.  Good luck to Tim and Rapha Matos as well at Fast Track.  

Car #34, Conquest Racing with Gavin Sanders and Michai Stephens.  Michai Stephens drove with Colin Mullen in 2021.  They ran a partial 2021 campaign but did well enough to score third in the season standings.  They really turned it on.  What will happen for them this year?  We'll see.  Gavin Sanders comes out of a one-make series in Canada for Nissan Sentra's.  Here is another car and driver duo to keep a sharp eye on.  The #18 RS1 Porsche Cayman in the Silver division, for Eric Filgueiras and Stevan McAleer.  Filgueiras is new to SRO competition.  He and his dad have worked on his career and he already has won a major GT4 event in 2022.  Ross Chouest is back on the grid.  We saw him with the #50 Aston Martin for Chouest Povoledo Racing in GT America earlier today.  

Well, Chouest Povoledo Racing are campaigning the #50 in GT4 America, too, as a duo.  Normally they have two cars but they have pressed one car into service for both races.  We also see in sixth place, the #35 Conquest Racing Mercedes AMG GT4.  Manny Franco starts the car, co-driving with Josh Hurley.  Franco is a veteran Ferrari Challenge racer.  At the time, Manny Franco won the biggest Powerball lottery jackpot in history.  OK.  I won all this money.  What ever shall I do with it?  Aha.  I will go racing, and be a race car driver.  That is what Manny Franco did.  Josh Hurley, from California is his co-driver, Manny Franco, from Wisconsin.  The engines have fired up.  42 strong around a two and a half mile track.  This will be wild and crazy.

This is the final race on day one so stay tuned because we have even more racing tomorrow.  This is a one hour event.  No tire changes in GT4 America but between 25 and 35 minutes, the teams will pit for a driver change.  Again, this field is stacked with great drivers.  The brand new Porsche Cayman GT4 is finally entirely homologated for GT4.  It has run at Imola in GT4 European Series, a race you have read about and it is also in IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge.  So, with all the talk out of the way, now we can go racing.  We have Gavin Sanders on the pole with Ryan Dexter at his elbow.  Here we go.  21 rows of GT4 cars about to be turned loose.  Gavin Sanders controlling the field.

Green flag through the VP acceleration zone.  Punch it!  Away we go!  Dexter gets swamped as Sanders is going to take the lead but Eric Filguieras, here he comes in Porsche Cayman #18!  A shemozzle back in the pack as the cars fan out through the uphill esses for the first time.  Filguieras is up to second spot.  Adam Adelson aboard the Premier Racing Porsche Cayman going off the road and back on.  That is the #120 car Adelson will share today with Elliott Skeer.  Warren Dexter shoves Eric Filgueras.  No tire temp in these harder compound Pirelli tires.  No tire warmers in GT4.  Cold tires will be treacherous as the air is cooling late in the day.  #888, Sean Whalen in the Aston Martin has a tire rub after some contact, some argy bargy.  

Ross Chouest is moving up, but Chris Cagnazzi is having trouble spinning the Cameron Racing Mercedes AMG GT4.  Guy Cosmo is his co-driver.  Big trouble early on for those boys.  Sorry, everyone.  I cannot pick up the number on that car.  Heavy damage again, look, for the Sean Whalen Aston Martin.  Once again, I can't tell.  That is the #888 entry.  This is an additional car not on the initial entry list that yours truly has.  Sorry guys.  Steve Cameron, Chris Cagnazzi and Guy Cosmo are at their home track here in Sonoma, so they have to be disappointed if indeed they are headed for the house.  They will be back tomorrow.  Meantime, Gray Newell in the #24 Aston Martin, he is motoring already.

Newell in The Heart of Racing car sharing with Ian James.  Newell makes the pass past James Walker Jr. in the #82 Bimmerworld BMW M4 GT4.  That car has Devin Jones co-driving.  He had a massive accident during the 2020 season and had to recover for more than a year.  But he is back racing now in 2022.  Glad to see him back behind the wheel, teamed up with James Walker Jr.  Full Course Yellow.  Oh dear.  We have a couple stranded cars and one of them is a GMG Porsche.  This is Kyle Washington, racing in Porsche Cup, GT America and GT4 America.  Debris on the road and the marshals will get that cleaned up.  Bryan Putt up eight spots.  Sam Owen up seven places.  Scott Noble up eight places.  Thomas Surgent and Mark Siegel have also moved up.  

The #68 TGR Smooge Racing Toyota Supra is in the lane.  This is John Geesbreght sharing with Kevin Conway, a former stock car driver turned sports car road racer.  We will be keeping a sharp eye on Manny Franco.  He is seventh overall, fifth in Silver.  Three Silver drivers followed by a Pro-Am in Ross Chouest.  Tim Horrell is next up who will be turning the car over to Raphael Matos who was on the fast track to being an IndyCar driver and ran in prototypes.  Then he went off the radar, found his way in Trans Am and now in GT4 with SRO America.  Cagnazzi's car is up there after the accident and Kyle Washington's Porsche Cayman is also being retrieved as we see heavy left front corner damage to the #60 Ginetta G56 GT4.  This is another Dexter Racing car in the hands of Ben Anderson and Matt Rivard.  Anderson at the wheel of it right now.

Dexter Racing have a great amount of experience running Ginetta's the family team out of Nebraska running in Trans Am and now in GT4.  They have run Aston Martin's and are running the Toyota Supra as well.  A small team that makes things work well.  Too bad to see Kevin Conway, John Geesbreght and Smooge Racing out early, a team led by veteran driver and owner Tony Ave.  Maybe they will come back tomorrow and do better.  They are in Silver as the driver rating.  Kevin Conway examining the wheel well and the suspension.  Conway was a NASCAR Cup rookie, and his father Sam was a team manager for the great Darrell Waltrip during his driving career.  

John Geesbreght is now a college student at Grand Canyon State University, majoring in Entrepreneurial Studies.  Charlie Postins co-driving with James Clay in the second Bimmerworld BMW M4 GT4, #36.  These two have been racing in the Nurburgring Langstrecke at the famed Nurburgring in Germany as of late.  Those are races you have seen in video here on the blog.  They were teammates in 2021 and the deal came very late.  James Clay wanted to race with Ari Balogh but it did not work.  Bill Auberlen and Chandler Hull of course went up to GT3.  James Clay is now in GT4 at the last second.  They might get a second GT3 car and Clay could race in GT3.  All 20 of the GT3 cars that ran before will run the full season and we could see more GT3 machines later in the year.

With this safety car scramble, the drive time for driver one in these lineups is being eaten into and that's not good.  The drivers will have anywhere from 13-23 minutes of drive time to go before handing the car over.  On day one with the Am drivers starting, pit on the earlier side.  Check your agenda and see what the scoop is.  The second drivers have to be thrilled though because they will still have fresh Pirelli P Zero tires.  We saw tire dropoff of four seconds on the test day and we saw times fall with the GT3 race you just read about.  Kenton Koch, co-driver with Bryan Putt says that on strategy, going fast and getting up to temperature, passing and whatnot, is the deal.  Bring it in with all four tires.  Don't wreck.  Simple idea, right?

The Aston Martin is strong and they have to see where their long run pace is compared to the Cayman and the Supra.  Kenton Koch has also been racing in GT4 Europe.  These two blokes have worked together racing for the last six years.  Camaraderie and loyalty are the deal.  Dani, Kenton Koch's wife, she is the team manager at BSport.  His performance in customer Aston Martin's and he has been in the AMR Young Driver test for the Aston Martin factory in the World Endurance Championship as well.  He also is racing in GT4 Europe in an Aston for Hella Pagid Racing One and their team.  They had pace at Imola in the latest race you have read about.  Kenton Koch was on the Mazda ladder and won in class at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, but then things just did not work out the way he would have wanted.

Now, he is clearly in a good spot.  All credit to Aston Martin.  Sports car racing is seeing the Am drivers getting coached so their co-drivers can be their coaches and they get real time data about the cars for the races.  Andrew Davis and more are so solid as drivers and as mentors to the young drivers.  Jason Hart and Matt Travis have been broken up.  Scott Noble is Jason Hart's new teammate at Nolasport in the Porsche Cayman.  They are quick.  Bryan Putt and Kenton Koch though, they have chemistry and need to make hay while the sun shines.  Engineer Eric Peterson is right on.  The competition is really stepping up.  42 cars initially started this race and we are six minutes away from opening the pit window.

Green flag coming up.  Your top five as we go back to green is Gavin Sanders, Ryan Dexter, Eric Filgueiras, Ross Chouest, and Tim Horrell.  Warren Dexter lunges past Sanders!  Wow.  No dice for Dexter though.  Gracious!  The crest of that hill to turn three is really steep.  Down the hill to turn four.  We can see the Ford Mustang GT4 of Edgar Lau trying to fend off the challenge from Seth Lucas aboard the #016 Toyota Supra GT4 for TGR Hattori Motorsports out of Japan.  Lucas sharing the car with Matt Plumb.  That Mustang, Edgar Lau from Hong Kong, is sharing with factory Ford pilot Billy Johnson who ran with the Ford GT World Endurance Championship program many moons ago up until it ended in 2019.  He is a hot shoe in a GT4 Mustang too.

Rob Holland drove for this same team in GT America while Filguieras has passed Dexter.  Filguieras from Coco Beach, Florida.  He and McAleer have won a race already in 2022 as Gray Newell makes a pass on a new team at Absolute Racing.  Absolute Racing are from Asia and have run there in Asian Le Mans as well as in GT World Challenge Europe and Asia and in other sports car racing championships.  Anderson Tanoto from Jakarta, Indonesia, sharing with Porsche ace and Nurburgring expert test driver, Germany's Lars Kern aboard a GT4 Porsche Cayman.  Oh dear!  Tim Horrell in the BMW M4 GT4 whacks the wall coming into turn one on driver's left!  Ouch!  He has torn the left front corner to pieces.  

There is a second car involved and we stay green.  Eric Filguieras is going for the lead of the motor race and will turn the car over to Stevan McAleer, two Silver rated drivers.  The top five is all Silver class driver pairings.  Full Course Yellow on the speedway.  38 minutes left on the board.  The pit window can be moved and can wait to open it.  It will still be ten minutes.  In replay, we can see the three into two coming off the final turn didn't work.  Poor old Rapha Matos will not be driving today.  Game over for Fast Track Racing.  This is the old Classic BMW team that has transitioned in branding.  Team boss Toby Grahovec used to drive.  But they will be busy fixing a bent chassis tonight before the next race tomorrow morning.  A lot of work for the team overnight.

Again, Tim Horrell has a disability stemming for a traffic accident and so, he uses hand controls in the car as we have seen with drivers such as Robert Wickens, Alex Zanardi, Freddie Sausset, Nigel Bailly, and others.  Pit lane will open next time by.  Driver changes are coming.  The minimum pit stop time is 92 seconds.  Use a one second joker but once a weekend, not both races.  Adjust tire pressure.  No tire changes allowed.  Driver changes are the biggest part.  Be efficient about releasing the car but do not lollygag.   The leader, that is the Mercedes at Conquest Racing, Gavin Sanders driving.  He should hand the car off to Michai Stephens.  John Farrow, team boss, hosted a shootout in December at NOLA Motorsports Park and they ended up choosing Gavin Sanders.  Farrow is passionate about racing and giving young drivers opportunities.

Those with the means support these young drivers.  We do hope Colin Mullin finds an opportunity.  Oh no.  Red flag.  The race has been stopped.  Deary me.  We are in the final race of the day here at Sonoma Raceway.  So let's hope this red flag does not last too long as we see the crashed cars towed away.  Ross Chouest and Aaron Povoledo, if you have trouble with one car being run in both races, it will be tough.  Hard to tell how much damage #50 sustained.  The manufacturers and customer racing support is excellent, but in the supply chain issues we know exist, it is hard to get parts for motor racing and the cars.  Michai Stephens was ready to go just before the red flag was displayed.  Stephens says that he has been afforded a great opportunity and given a massive chance from the heart and the soul.  Return the gesture to the team boss.  Pay it forward.

Do the best possible, every race.  The team is grateful to be with one another.  Michai Stephens was another driver who very nearly fell through the net.  He ran at the Formula Ford Festival in England and was noticed by the great Jeremy Shaw.  They had four straight Silver class wins at the end of the 2021 season.  Former driver and team owner Eric Bachelart, is still in the team ownership game and is part of this Conquest team with John Farrow.  Bachelart did the same deal in IndyCar with Jan Heylen, believe it or not.  Being a driver you are more in tune for looking for talent, and that is no disrespect at all to team owners who are also good talent scouts but did not drive a race car themselves.  Eric Bachelart ran in Indy Lights and did so against Brian Till who is the drivers' advisory steward for SRO America and we see added time back just before the red flag got displayed.

At speed, this field is impressive.  But we have seen many incidents.  We still have over half an hour to race yet and how will the pit window be shifted?  We'll see.  We look at the Saleen as an invitational entry with Steve Saleen, the man himself driving with Eric Curran.  It is not homologated for GT4 yet.  The data will be sent to France to the SRO tech team.  Terry Borcheller is back, too, a sports car racing legend who has won the Rolex 24 a few times and he still lives and breathes racing.  We are looking too at Absolute Racing and Anderson Tanoto who were teams champions in GT World Challenge Asia in 2019, the last time there was a series and the championship was hit by the pandemic.  They are set to race again this year.  Nikolai Madsen and Anderson Tanoto were shut out.  He did race GT4 in IMSA at Laguna Seca last year and we'll see where he goes.

Capstone and the Snow brothers, "Crazy Cole", Ciraulo, and "Wild Willy", Kris Wilson.  Kris Wilson is also known as "grandpa" somehow or other.  There's lots of faith in the team and they seem to be having loads of fun too.  Okie dokie.  We are back under yellow as the cars stream out of pit lane and so we are going to get the rest of this first race for GT4 America in.  The Mercedes AMG is a very useful car and is always in the ballpark, no matter if it is GT3 or GT4.  32 minutes and counting on the board in race one, the season opener.  So many new names and faces running extremely well.  That's good to see.  We also see drivers evolve over a number of seasons, such as Sean Quinlan.  Quinlan is taking a year off in 2022.

But, others are the same way, Jason Bell, Bryan Putt.  Gray Newell's Aston Martin needs a car wash.  That thing is dirty.  The safety car is in the lane and we go back to green with Gavin Sanders leading Eric Filgueiras.  Gray Newell sideways up the hill, doing some unintentional drifting!  Unintentional stunt driver?  Maybe.  Great save on cold tires!  Anderson Lau moves to second in Pro-Am in the Rotek Mustang.  Pit window open as we see Moisey Uretsky pushing hard as well.  Filgueiras sees discretion is the better part of valor trying to pass Gavin Sanders!  Kris Wilson, too, look, makes a mega sized move on Ryan Dexter!  This could end in tears.  Side by side.  Dexter slams the door and Wilson backs off.

Playing defense against Manny Franco, and oh dear, Wilson spins!  Tanoto tipped him.  Pit stop time for RS1 as Filgueiras comes in but Sanders stays out and there's a traffic jam on the 101 into the lane here.  Everyone dives for the lane, nose to tail.  Anderson Tanoto hands the Cayman over to Lars Kern.  Gray Newell hands the Aston Martin to Ian James.  Paul Sparta pits the Random Vandals Racing BMW M4 GT4 and will hand off to Al Carter.  Gavin Sanders and Ryan Dexter plan to stay on track.  Tires are good for most of the cars.  Early pit stop takers are going to be coming out of the lane.  Traffic jam in the lane, look.  The inside car has to give way to the cars in the fast lane, by rule.  #34 stays out but he is backed up behind cars that just exited.  Gavin Sanders has to work traffic but the Pro drivers are into the Pro-Am cars with Greg Liefooghe ahead.  

Liefooghe in the second Fast Track Racing BMW M4 GT4, car #11, that he shares with Canadian driver Damon Surzyshyn.  In a battle of the Aston Martin's we can see Ian James playing defense against Kenton Koch.  Koch, late on the brakes, makes a pass.  Kenton Koch on the out lap from his pit stop clears Gray Newell.  Get the points on the board before your competition finds their feet.  That's the name of the game.  Again, look, we can see Koch playing defense against James with identical cars, with the two Aston Martin Vantage GT4's, built in Banbury, England.  Gavin Sanders to the lane.  So, what shall he do?  How will his co-driver get back on track?  That is Michai Stephens.  

Stevan McAleer has of course taken over the #18 RS1 Porsche Cayman.  McAleer running ninth is on full power mode, turning up the wick.  Mercedes #34 in the pit lane, making the driver change.  McAleer, originally from Scotland, now living in upstate New York, driving for RS1.  McAleer zooms by Stephens while he exits the pit lane.  New leader, RS1 around Conquest.  23 minutes to go in race one.  McAleer has just uncorked fastest lap of the motor race at 1:46.253.  McAleer also has a clear road ahead.  Anderson Tanoto aboard the #899 Absolute Racing Porsche Cayman leads in the Pro-Am division, sharing with Lars Kern.  

Lars Kern must take a drive through penalty for Tanoto's indiscretion, for incident responsibility for a pit stop infraction.  Truth be told, these are two separate penalties.  #899, the Absolute Racing Porsche, pinged for incident responsibility in causing a collision.  That is one penalty.  The second penalty is handed to the #80 Rooster Hall Racing BMW M4 GT4 for a separate pit stop violation.  That is the car being shared by Todd Brown and Johan Schwartz, just to clear up any confusion with two penalties being issued by the stewards within the very same moment.

   

Tanoto made a mistake during his stint.  Pit window still pen with just 22 minutes left.  In replay, we can see that Tanoto speeding away, from behind, came up, and gave the Mercedes a thud causing #34 to spin.  Sports car racing legend Jack Baldwin, he is the class manager for SRO GT4 America and has done a very good job of keeping things equal in the division for the SRO in the United States.  The same is true in attracting teams to the series, bringing teams to the table like Absolute Racing who have a fine endurance and/or sports car racing pedigree to begin with.

Kenton Koch, it appears, will be promoted past Anderson Tanoto.  This move is for the Pro-Am class lead.  Austen Smith had a great start and moved up ten places after starting down the order.  Smith aboard the #51 Auto Technic Racing BMW M4 GT4 he shares with Zack Anderson.  That team has three cars on three different levels.  The Smith/Anderson car is Silver rated.  The sister #52 is a Pro-Am rated team with John Capestro-Dubets and Tom Capizzi.  The third car is in the Am class with Rob Walker and Canadian driver Alex Filsinger.  Ryan Dexter and Dexter Racing, they have a strategy to stay on track and run deep into the pit window.

Dexter's co-driver Dominic Starkweather should be next into the #112 Toyota Supra.  Again, Dexter Racing one of the teams now running under the Toyota Gazoo Racing banner.  They are on an alternate strategy.  We shall see how that washes out.  The race has finally found a rhythm.  Pit window closed and the overall leader totally mistimed this thing!  Oh dear, oh dear.  We see the Am class leading BMW M4 GT4 for Bimmerworld on the road.  This is James Clay having taken over the wheel from Charlie Postins.  A scrum between the BMW's with James Clay and Zack Anderson!  Wow.  How will this one shake out?  Clay will have his elbows out as they dive through The Carousel.  

We have just seen the debut of the new M4 GT3 car, well, in the not-too-distant future, probably next year, we will see the new version of the GT4 spec M4 BMW as well.  The M4 GT3 in early days is already successful.  Race Control tells us that Dexter Racing is under review on when they got in the lane in accordance to the pit window.  Toyota, BMW, and Audi race each other in a traffic jam and the fascinating thing is that the Toyota Supra uses the same BMW sourced powerplant than the M4 GT4 does.  The first sector of this track at Sonoma, is amazingly challenging.  The grip level and the elevation change, plus the blind corners, can really catch drivers out.  Meanwhile, McAleer remains out front, 3.2 seconds to the good over Michai Stephens.

Stephens has just run his best lap and he was 3/10ths of a second quicker than McAleer.  This motor race, with 17 minutes on the board yet, is far from over.  We see Kenton Koch remains in the lead in Pro-Am.  McAleer has networked and is a busy boy.  Koch, Liefooghe, Andrew Davis, they have all been networking.  Conquest Racing of course has two cars.  Ian James passes Josh Hurley in the #35 Mercedes taking over from Manny Franco.  Third in Silver, fifth in the overall with just 15 or so minutes left in the race.  Wow!  A ding dong scrap between former Indy Lights and current Lexus IMSA GT Daytona driver Aaron Telitz against SRO touring car driver Austen Smith!  Turn up the heat!

Elbows out for Telitz through turn four and dropping down through The Carousel.  Telitz gets this opportunity through the connection with Toyota Racing Development, and Todd Coleman, his co-driver, has had Telitz as a driver coach while he has been competing in Ferrari Challenge and now, Coleman is stepping up the ladder to GT4 racing.  Drive through penalty for Dominic Starkweather due to missing the pit window.  Wow.  It is a massive bottleneck through the chicane!  Take a look at this mess.  How will they sort this out?

Telitz is in the middle of a chess match.  Telitz runs in deep and thankfully keeps it together.  Side by side racing with a couple Toyota Supra's, look.  Starkweather has to serve the penalty.  Moisey Uretsky has done his stint and now, Justin Piscitell, a journeyman driver is at the wheel of the #55 Toyota Supra GT4 for TGR Accelerating Performance, and again, TGR is Toyota Gazoo Racing.  Piscitell was called up to join Moisey Uretsky and when he does drive he can really go for it.  He finished on the podium at Daytona in two different cars in two different classes one year.  Michai Stephens is doing all he can to catch Stevan McAleer as Stephens passes Johan "The Drift King" Schwartz.  

Michai Stephens, meanwhile, has the fastest corner entry speed into turn six at 88.2 miles an hour followed by Kenton Koch at 86.9 miles an hour, Alain Stad at 86.3 miles an hour, Jason Hart at 85.7 miles an hour, and lastly, Thomas Merrill at 84 and a half miles an hour.  Michai Stephens has just eaten half a second out of Stevan McAleer.  Porsche Cayman vs. Mercedes AMG.  James Clay leads the Am class running 15th overall.  Michai Stephens is gaining on Stevan McAleer and quickly.  We should have around six or seven laps to go.  Stevan McAleer ran a partial season in 2021 with Classic BMW and Toby Grahovec.  We have gone nearly 50 minutes into the race and have not spoken of Billy Johnson yet.  

Billy Johnson, one of the best Ford Mustang pilots.  Johnson has won tons of races with Ford, ran at Le Mans and in the Chip Ganassi Ford GT team.  He won in 2018-2019 at the Spa 6 Hours in the buildup to Le Mans during the WEC "Super Season".  Billy Johnson has been associated with Ford and Multimatic for years and in the development of this GT4 spec Ford Mustang.  Johnson has his hands full with one of the Aston Martin's with less than ten minutes remaining on the clock in race one.  Billy Johnson racing Andrew Davis.  A couple savvy veterans.  McAleer leads but is a tenth slower than Michai Stephens.  Stephens is 2.1 seconds behind.

McAleer has been keeping his powder dry and now going to the well to grab whatever he has left.  The Pro-Am battle, third and fourth overall, the Aston Martin slugfest between Kenton Koch and Ian James.  Ian James has years and years of experience.  Aaron Telitz is tenth, eighth in Pro-Am moving past Devin Jones.  There are still patches of water on the road from the overnight and early morning rain showers.  The first half of this race was plagued by yellows and thankfully has settled into a rhythm as Lars Kern moves up to 21st spot around the #83 Am class RS1 Porsche Cayman with an all-Colombian duo.  Juan Martinez at the controls, alongside Nelson Calle.

Ian James, sawing the wheel, trying to put the power down with the Pirelli P Zero's beginning to get knackered.  Jason Hart passes for Pro-Am third place, final step of the podium, passing the #8 GMG Aston Martin in the hands of Andy Lee.  Tuck the car in tight into turn 11 to have the power onto the front straight.  Stevan McAleer's lead is up to 2.7 seconds over Michai Stephens.  James Clay leads in Am aboard the #36 Bimmerworld BMW M4 GT4 after Charlie Postins started that automobile.  Clay has a good size lead over Thomas Merrill and Al Carter.  Carter at Random Vandals Racing is doing very well alongside Paul Sparta.  Former Mazda MX-5 Cup champion, Stevan McAleer, he owns a Mazda MX-5 Cup team along with Chad McCumbee who has raced in SRO GT4 America with the Pesek team.

They could come back because the next race is at their new track at Ozarks International Raceway.  The Pesek family funded and built that track, and we will see a race there for SRO America next time out in the middle of May.  Excited to bring that one to you.  Ozarks is set up like a miniature version of The Nurburgring.  Ian James is inching towards Kenton Koch tightly running into the hairpin. Ian James and Gray Newell want this because they had just two podiums in 2021 at the Watkins Glen doubleheader.  Ian James has the speed and the ability to put the car where he wants it.  Koch opens the door and here comes James 'round the outside!

James, sawing the wheel, look, and here comes Kenton Koch to take the place back!  It's a drag race to the final turn!  Koch gives James space and he might just make a clean pass here.  Bang on the money.  He does it.  That is good, clean, first class motor racing right before your eyes ladies and gentlemen.  James is going to all he knows to hang on.  Lurking in the background, look, reigning Pro-Am champion, Jason Hart.  He wants a bite of the cherry before the checkers, but is running out of time.  Stevan McAleer leads still and Michai Stephens has closed in to a 2.2 second gap.  But McAleer is controlling the motor race from the front.

I believe there are two laps left.  We may see the white flag this time around.  Less than a minute on the clock.  45 seconds.  A time certain race, this.  Michai Stephens from the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois.  White flag now.  One lap to go.  Wow!  What has happened to Ian James?  He has been passed by both Kenton Koch and Jason Hart?  How on earth did that happen?  Koch leads but Hart will be right on his gearbox.  Poor old Ian James is off the pace!  Deary me.  Well, he will have to come back tomorrow and try again.  Koch leads the Pro-Am class.  Andy Lee is also in the picture.  Ian James better hope he can hang on by his fingernails for one more lap.  In Am, the battle is hot and heavy too.  James Clay does not have it sewn up yet.  Thomas Merrill is right behind him, steaming along at full bore.

The clock has gone to zero, but the battles are not done yet.  Merrill has one of the new Nolasport Porsche Cayman's too.  Well, it is at least a Cayman.  Not sure which team.  I think it's Nolasport.  But Stevan McAleer will win for RS1, in race one at Sonoma!  Wow.  Kenton Koch has managed the gap and he and Bryan Putt get the second win for BSport in Pro-Am.  Ian James has dropped like a stone in eighth place.  James Clay being harried by Thomas Merrill.  James Clay and Bimmerworld win in the Am class.  Wow!  That was a wild one at the end of the motor race!  The first 20 minutes with the red flag slowed the race down, but the second half was a sizzler!

McAleer wins the race by 1.6 seconds.  

Overall/Silver: #18 Filguieras/McAleer     RS1 Porsche Cayman GT4 RS Clubsport

             Pro-Am: #15 Koch/Putt                 BSport Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT4

             Am: #36 Clay/Postins                    Bimmerworld Racing BMW M4 GT4

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So, that is the final race on Saturday for SRO America at Sonoma Raceway.  We will be back tomorrow to bring you all of the Sunday action.  Stay tuned.  Good night, from the wine country of northern California.  Take care, and we'll see you tomorrow for more motor racing.  Bye bye.

                  

TC America: Sonoma, Race 1

The first race of a brand-new season for 2022 in SRO TC America, takes place here at Sonoma Raceway in the northern California wine country, powered as always by the Skip Barber Racing School.  Three classes running together as we join Ryan Myrehn, Calvin Fish, and Amanda Busick.  We will be missing one driver on the grid today, as we mourn the loss of the late, great Joey Jordan.  His family gives the command for the drivers to fire their engines.  Joe Jordan was an integral member of the touring car paddock.  He was a colleague, friend, and driver.  Joe lived for racing and the SRO was a part of his family.  His wife Janice is thankful.  Over the winter, Joe Jordan passed away.  Rest In Peace, Joe.  You have taken the checkered flag in heaven.  His brother, Jim Jordan is class manager.  Joe Jordan's sone Joey is driving today too.  

Steve Streimer has pole for the opening event of the championship.  Steve Streimer has TCX pole.  Mat Pombo on pole in TC.  Carter Fartuch has pole in TCA debuting the new Honda Civic SI in that class.  Several wrecks happened in a very rainy qualifying sessions, and so, the grid was set by times from Free Practice 2.  We have a massive, 36-car field.  Kevin Boehm dropped five places as a penalty for a tech infringement.  First green flag racing for many of these drivers.  Steve Streimer leads the field for HARD Motorsports alongside reigning champion Jacob Ruud.  Next up, Steven Cugliari and Mark Wilgis, then Marcus Cattanea and Olivia Askew.  Green flag!  Ruud to the inside and Cugliarti goes for it too and poor old Steve Streimer gets freighttrained already.  

Here come the TCA cars.  Mat Pombo will go for it and everyone is coming up the hill.  Carter Fartuch, and here is Christian Pericarpi in the #61 Mini.  Here come the TC cars as Kevin Boehm wants a title after coming up short in 2021.  Clay Williams is slowing.  Unlike the TC spec Mini's, that TCA spec car has a big old wing on the back of it.  Something's not working on that car.  He's off the pace and it could indeed be game over.  Joey Jordan is moving up and the Mazda team have been working the kinks out on that car in the electronics department.  They are getting close to being where they'd like to.  The antilock brakes are also being worked on and they need a new system.  They had a truncated season in 2021 and that's a tough deal.

Christian Pericarpi is looking for his first win having run four races last year.  This was a graduation gift for Christian Pericarpi from his dad Louis Pericarpi who runs the team.  Ronnie Bucknum who raced in Formula 1 for Honda and ran at Le Mans for Ferrari, and his son Jeff Bucknum raced open wheel cars and sports cars.  This is the third generation as Spencer Bucknum is making his sports car racing debut in SRO TC America.  The BMW M2 TCX cars running right together as Jacob Ruud is trying his hardest to run and hide but Steven Cugliari wants to go for it and battle Ruud for the title in 2022.  Cugliari has a background in Mazda MX-5 Cup as well.

Ruud won a bunch of races in 2021 and finished second and fourth a few times as well.  The Racine, Wisconsin, native was on a roll last year.  In TCA, meantime, Colin Harrison is battling Sally McNulty who had a few top five's in 2021.  McNulty works on the car and has assistance from VGRT, Victor Gonzalez Racing Team.  Kevin Boehm has pressed his way from sixth to second.  Sally McNulty works at a dealer by day and on her race car by night, with 15 sponsors supporting her endeavors.  She is out there to race and to catch the eye of a TC team.  Carter Fartuch in one of the Skip Barber Racing School Honda Civic SI's has the lead in TCA.  

You work your way up from TCA, TC, TCX, and then into GT4 and GT3.  We see Spencer Bucknum with damage.  But, Spencer Bucknum's grandfather, Ronnie, ran for Honda in Formula 1 back in the 1960s.  The family are well known with Honda.  Jeff Bucknum had a Honda motor in the Indianapolis 500 as well.  Kevin Boehm in the meantime, is pressing Mat Pombo.  Someone has spun someplace.  We shall see what happened there.  Kevin Boehm is more of an engineer in 2022 and he has mechanics working on the car.  He is focusing on engineering and driving.  His day job is a Senior Vehicle Dynamics Engineer and test driver for Honda Performance Development.  He tested the new production Acura NSX.  He won in TCA in 2020 and nearly beat Eric Powell in TC last year.  He also was very quick in club racing.

Honda vs. Honda as Kevin Boehm makes his move on Mat Pombo.  Can Pomb return the favor?  Boehm from sixth place to the lead, but it is early doors yet.  Boehm finished third and first here in his first TC races last year, his first races in this category.  Olivia Askew may have spun and has dropped down the order in TCX and overall.  Lucas Catania has also gone by Steve Streimer.  What has become of Clay Williams in the TC class Mini?  He must be running again.  He has gone by both Jeff Ricca and Matthew Ibrahim.  27 minutes left in the motor race.  Mark Wiglus and Garrett Adams, new drivers in the TC class.  They are BMW drivers.

Wilgus and Adams are a part of the four-car team in TCX for Fast Track Racing in cars #54 and #76.  Garrett Adams ran twice at the Sebring round in 2021 for this team finishing third and fourth in class in TCX.  Mark Wilgus is making his professional racing debut.  P.J. Groenke has moved over from Techsport and the Subaru BRZ to the Mini Cooper and speaking of Techsport Subaru, one of their BRZ entries has backed it into the fence.  They have three BRZ's entered this year for Gresham Wagner, Devin Anderson, and Chinese driver Shaoyi Che.  

This is #22 and he lost it and spun backwards into the fence.  That is Devin Andersen driving away, the son of team owner Kevin Andersen.  He went for a downshift and locked the rear tires. This is the new Subaru BRZ TCA customer car with a 2.4 liter 4 cylinder motor.  A big slide through the corner there as it is a battle of the Honda's.  L.A. Honda World vs. Skip Barber Racing School.  #42, Ken Fukuda, teammate to Kevin Boehm.  Fukuda in hot pursuit of Mike LaMarra.  L.A. Honda World are now running their program in house while LAP Motorsports is now just running their own Mini team.  Yikes!  Mike LaMarra, going rallying with a Scandinavian flick as the Honda gets tail happy!

Mike LaMarra saves it but maybe has a wee bit more brake bias to the rear than he'd like.  Ken Fukuda started four races last year with a best finish of fifth spot at Watkins Glen in 2021.  Fukuda wants a podium place.  Catania in the TCX BMW has dropped down the order.  Adams passes Wilgus in TCX for fifth.  Fukuda has more speed than does LaMarra.  LaMarra is hanging on by his fingernails.  Eric Powell was the driver last year who won the title in TC America.  Oh dear.  Joey Jordan stops on track in the Mazda.  Not good.  Where did he stop and is he in a safe haven?  He is in the no man's land between turn one and the cut through to turn six.

We see a good fight here for position.  Nicholas Barbato who debuted at Indianapolis last fall, is at the wheel of the #88 GeoRacer/Ricca Autosport Hyundai Veloster N TC.  Barbato had pole in his first ever race in the Hyundai at "The Brickyard" and finished on the podium in both events.  Now he is monstering Clay Williams aboard the TC specification Mini.  Sonoma Raceway is Clay Williams' home track.  Williams has a more powerful car.  LAP Motorsports has the blessing of the Mini factory.  They provide technicians from Mini dealerships to reward their employees to work on the racing version of the Mini.  Williams and Barbato are tied for the fastest trap speeds at 116.1 miles an hour while Boehm, Fukuda, and Ricca, have each been racing at 115 and a half miles an hour.

Fukuda has a lunge on Mike LaMarra for the TC podium!  Wow!  Who is lurking?  It is indeed Clay Williams.  We are getting close and are now at halfway.  Clay Williams at Indianapolis last year went back to back.  Tomorrow's race will have a grid determined by best lap times.  Currently we can see Clay Williams at the top of the shop.  Williams wants by LaMarra but can't make it work and Ken Fukuda can scamper away.  Fukuda runs wide through the chicane and now has LaMarra and Williams on his six.  Wow.  This is heavy racing, and a great battle.  Different cars, different gear ratios.  The Mini has to be in it's sweet spot.  

To the sharp end and Jacob Ruud is the man at the top of the shop with the TCX BMW M2.  But guess who is on Ruud's back door?  Yes, you've guessed it.  It is Stephen Cugliari.  Ruud cuts fastest lap of the motor race thus far at 1:52.331.  Ruud was slower last time by at 1:54.2.  So he may be getting tire degradation or encountering traffic.  Cugliari, last time by, cut a 1:53.7.  We can hope that Stephen Cugliari sticks around for a full season here in SRO TC America to show us what he's got.  Kevin Boehm leads TC.  He is racing with Skip Barber Racing School, but, he has the Crowdstrike livery on the car.

Boehm is a tad down the order.  Carter Fartuch also leads TCA for Skip Barber Racing building a lead of five seconds over Gresham Wagner, racing for Techsport.  Wagner has been racing Mazda MX-5 Cup for a number of years.  Wagner actually began the race in second.  My bad.  Sally McNulty at the tail end of this train, the caboose, in a TCA car behind a gaggle of TCX entries.  Jeff Ricca is now in the pit lane in the DCT TC division aboard his Hyundai Veloster.  Ken Fukuda has to hang on as Clay Williams in the Mini is coming in a hurry.  Williams is thinking, "oh wow.  Those Honda's are having a little party, and they didn't invite me!"  Does anyone wanna go waltzing in the garden?  Does anyone wanna go dance upon the roof?  

Mini vs. Honda spiraling down the Carousel and Clay Williams is on pace.  Someone is blipping the rev limiter.  Williams is not letting the pressure get to him.  Nicholas Barbato in the sister Hyundai is also in this fight, the sister Veloster.  They are catching one of the Hyundai Elantra N's from Bryan Herta Autosport.  Hard to tell if that is Tyler Delgado in the #33 or Branyon Tiner in the #98.  Williams is right on Fukuda's gearbox.  Fukuda has his hands full and did Williams have to check up?  Fukuda went to power and the tire said, "enough!"  Williams jinks to the inside of Fukuda and Ken Fukuda defends his line slammin the door in the Mini driver's face.

Fukuda wants his first career podium place.  Barbato looks to the inside of LaMarra.  Fukuda struggling on corner exit now side by side with Williams and Williams makes the pass for third.  Barbato covers Mike LaMarra off.  Williams might just be able to pull the pin and set sail.  Barbato and company are really pushing as they work past P.J. Groenke in sixth place.  LaMarra is caught napping and here comes Barbato!  Barbato late on the brakes in turn 11.  Aye yaye yaye yaye yaye.  He's off the road.  Don't hit the tires.  Barbato was a lucky, luck boy to stay out of those tire bundles!  That was racing driver commitment, staying in it 'til the bitter end.  

Barbato is the 2013 SCCA Pro Solo Autocross champion.  So, those skills of racing against the clock around pylons really came in handy in avoiding those tire stacks.  He won the Solo and Pro Solo titles in 2014.  He has also run time trials and in GT Academy.  GenRacing has two Hyundai Veloster's and one of them, the car of Jeff Ricca is a dual clutch car while Barbato is running the traditional car.  We now have a Captain Cook at the #44 TCX car of Colin Garrett.  Rooster Hall Racing is the team.  Colin Garrett hails from Elmo, Virginia, near South Boston, and if you are a stock car buff you've heard of the famed South Boston Speedway, the short track there.

Colin Garrett has raced a ton around South Boston and has experience in stock cars.  He was fourth in 2019 in the Canadian Short Track Nationals.  He has run NASCAR Xfinity and truck series races and has also run in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series.  Good to see Rooster Hall back with 11-11 Project celebrating veterans and he is doing that, and Operation Motorsports with the Patriot Car Corral, too.  Check out Operation Motorsport.  Many of their beneficiaries have been hired on by teams after starting as volunteers.  Gresham Wagner is running well in the Tech Sport Subaru.  He was runner-up here at Sonoma in the 2018 edition of the SCCA Runoffs.  He has run in Mazda MX-5 Cup and was last year's champion winning five races with ten podiums.

He has overcome scoliosis which made him sit out of racing and he had surgery to turn his spine into one solid bone.  But he got back to racing.  As it stands now, third in TCA, Spencer Bucknum could very well finish on the podium.  Bucknum has run open wheel cars and he is a quick study in touring cars.  He comes from great genes as his grandpa and his dad were both great drivers, the Formula Pro USA Formula 4 Western Division champion.  Spencer Bucknum is looking for a new avenue.  Sports car racing is the golden ticket to be paid by factories.  Open wheel racing is not the only route.  90 seconds to go and Jacob Ruud will win yet another race.  He absolutely cleaned up in 2021 and will continue this performance into the first event of 2022.

Branyon Tiner, eighth in TCA spins the #98 Bryan Herta Autosport Hyundai Elantra N-Line entry.  Tiner has run for BHA in WRL, a club level endurance championship.  He has come out of karting.  Bryan Herta is on site here at Sonoma Raceway.  Meanwhile, it is the white flag lap here soon.  Stephen Cugliari will race the full season in SRO TC America.  Jacob Ruud wins the first race of the year!  Cugliari second and Lucas Cattanea in third in TCX.  To TC, Kevin Boehm has recovered from a five- place grid penalty and he wins the first TC America race.  TCA goes to Carter Fartuch winning over Gresham Wagner and Spencer Bucknum.  Two new drivers on the podum.  Fastest lap t Jacob Ruud at 1:52.331.

That will put Ruud in the pound seats for tomorrow's race.  Clay Williams on pole for TCA.    

Overall/TCX: #1 Jacob Ruud     Fast Track Racing BMW M2 CS Racing

             TC: #9 Kevin Boehm     Skip Barber Racing School Honda Civic Type R TC

             TCA: #16 Carter Fartuch     Skip Barber Racing School Honda Civic Si

Race two coming up tomorrow.  Fast Track Racing is the racing arm of the Classic BMW team which was rebranded.  Toby Grahovec is now the team boss who was driving in years past.  He is focusing on the customer end of their racing program.  Kevin Boehm drove from sixth to the lead and wins the motor race in the TC class.  He has won here and also won in the STU class at Sonoma in the 2018 SCCA Runoffs.  Carter Fartuch is the TCA winner.  He and the team are far more prepared with better equipment than last year.  He was the 2019 Saleen Cup Young Guns champion as well.  

So, Jacob Ruud has his 11th TC America win of his career.  Race two tomorrow for the drivers and teams of TC America.  Don't miss it.  See you then.  So long, for now.