Since the race in May at Sears Point, I've picked up a sponsor - Fifty Plus Media Corporation. The double regional at Laguna Seca was the first race that they were to be involved in as a sponsor so it was pretty exciting for them as well as for me. This also put a lot of pressure on me to get my car to the track. As you remember, I had no engine.

Ted had decided to let me use the stock engine that he had sitting under the bench. It had never been taken apart, and the last time it was run, he had overheated it. What we needed to do, was to take it down to components, clean it, replace anything that needed replacing and put it back together.

We got it taken apart and then it sat for a while. Ted was racing in a double national race at Thunderhill on Memorial Day, so we had been spending a lot of time getting his car prepared and not a lot of time on the engine. It was ready to go back together when we got back from the track on Monday afternoon.

Monday afternoon and Tuesday evening were a thrash to get the engine together. We did the finishing touches on Wednesday and dropped it in the car. Keep in mind that I had to leave on Thursday right after work in order to get a decent pit space, since Fifty Plus was going to do a hospitality table and I needed to make sure we had enough room. We got everything connected on Wednesday and the car was ready to go into the trailer except for one minor detail... it was somewhere in the neighborhood of midnight and we hadn't started it yet.

Now for a little more detail about the cars current set up. Up until the last race, I had been borrowing Dave's 41mm carburetor's and Ted's big headers and carburetor extenders... all the go fast stuff. Well, to go with my bone stock, spray it with brakleen and slap it together the heck with tolerances motor, Ted had found some old, smaller, cracked headers that he welded up for me to use, and I'm now using 39mm carburetors without extenders... not your hot ticket in tear up the track accessories.

We had a few more D's show up this weekend. You've already heard about Andy, Rich, and Kurt who were there (Bob was off racing in Portland or something like that) and this weekend we picked up Jim and Ray. Ray was last year's regional champion.

Friday was scheduled for practice and qualifying. There was a very heavy drizzle/mist and I didn't even bother to think about rain tires (it's June!). Neither did anyone else and no one in the DSR class even went out to practice.

Friday afternoon was clear, but a little overcast and cold. By this time, Saroja had arrived and we got a friend in the ITA class - Rick - to help her out on the wall with the pit board. At my last race at Laguna Seca, my best time was a 1:49. I went out to qualify with two things on my mind: first was my goal of getting consistently into the 40's; second was that this engine probably wasn't gonna set any track records.

On my third lap, I saw Rick and Saroja holding a time... it was a 1:39! I was sure that they were messing with me, until I realized that they didn't know what my previous best time was. The pit board kept coming out :38, :37, :37 and so on. I couldn't believe it, but when I got the qualifying results, I had turned a qualifying time of 1:36 which was good for second in class and 12 out of 32 in the group! I was .3 seconds behind Rich and about .5 seconds ahead of Ray and about 1 second ahead of Jim. We had qualified 10, 12, 14, and 16 which was going to put us in a row for the start. Kurt was a little further back and, unfortunately, Andy couldn't make it out for the Friday qualifying, so he had to start from the back.

After qualifying, Jim just came right out and asked me what tires I was running and went and bought new ones. A little later, Rich went over and got new tires and eventually I saw Ray rolling a new set of tires over for his car.

When I told Ted about the qualifying and that I was driving really well and I had been very good about keeping the revs up and shifting at around 10-10.5K rpm, he freaked. I guess I wasn't supposed to take the engine over 10K rpm and I was supposed to be shifting at around 9.5K. Oops. OK, so I probably wasn't going to better my lap times in the races.

We had one race on Saturday, and the whole Fifty Plus Media group was there to watch it. Saroja took them up to the media tower at Laguna and brought the video camera to record the race from a spectator's standpoint. And what a great race we had. Ray went blasting by me on the start and went flying into Turn 2 only to have a Formula Mazda get a rear wheel in front of his rear wheel which launched him and slowed down the rest of the group, including Rich who had been hot on his tail.

I went around the outside of the melee and found myself leading DSR ever so briefly. Ray managed to not flip and passed me going into Turn 4, Rich got by me in Turn 5 and then Jim and I settled down to race for a few laps until he got around me. I kept with him for a while and then got stuck in traffic. About halfway through the race I caught back up to Jim and went for the pass. I got under him in Turn 11 going onto the front straight and since I had a little bit better exit speed, I was just past him when we got to the hill under start/finish.

Race 2 on Sunday was just as much fun. Ray, again, blew by me on the start (I have to learn to do that), leaving Jim and I to play. I kept Jim behind me until someone spun in front of us. I went to the outside (since the car was going to the inside) and Jim went to the inside (since it was sitting still when he got to it). When all was said and done, he'd gotten past me.

I tried to keep up, but I got bogged down in traffic. After a few laps, I saw a purple car with a wing... Rich. What had happened up there. About that time a full course yellow came out for a Mazda that had put himself into the inside wall at Turn 6. I was hoping to get Rich on the restart, but I was one gear too low, so I had to shift too early and got passed on the restart. Nothing much exciting happened for the rest of the race except for the last lap.

A Formula Mazda decided that he was going to beat me (no he wasn't in my class and it wouldn't have improved either of our positions in class, just in the group). I held him off until Turn 11. I looked in my rear view mirror and saw that he was going to banzai late brake me. So I slowed way down and let him. This forced him to take the turn too fast and end up on the outside. In the meantime, I was going slow enough to apex very late, but fast enough that I had a better exit speed. I pulled past him on the front straight and crossed the finish line first. Later he came over while I was fiddling with the car getting it ready for the sprint race.

He saw Jim, Bob and LaRue sitting around, looked at me and turned back to the guys and asked where was "the guy driving that car?" They are started snickering and said "She's right there." He says "No, the driver." They look back at him and say "She is the driver." I stepped in about this time and we had fun redriving our last lap.

For the sprint race on Sunday afternoon, most of the people in the group had left, which put me fifth on the grid... and Ray sixth. With the way he passed me when he was behind me, I figured he wouldn't have any problem starting next to me. Jim wasn't there, and while I tried to keep up with Rich and Ray, they started crawling away leaving me with no one to play with. I ended up letting a Sports 2000 by so I wouldn't interfere with his race with the Sports 2000 that he was chasing, but then when he was by, he slowed down and blocked me when I tried to get back around him. Great. I wasn't too concerned about my position until Ted showed me a +03, telling me to shake it, 'cause I was only 3 seconds in third. I checked my rear view mirror and, sure enough, I see Andy's white and orange car in my sights.

The next race is also at Laguna Seca on July 16-18. It's a regional/national weekend, which means there will be a regional race and a national race. I've reviewed the points standings, and while I'm in a solid third right now, second is within my sights... my far sights, but anything is possible. This is why I've decided to only run the regional race. If anything were to happen in the national, I'd only have an hour to fix the car and get it back on the track. I don't want to risk losing the valuable points.