From: Rich Urschel To: ; Subject: SFR Round 2 Solo2 Date: Monday, March 20, 2000 1:44 AM SFR Round 2 Solo2 by Rich Urschel 241 drivers visited the Coliseum in Oakland on March 11th. Last year the Oakland lots were topped with a slurry coat heavy with sand and small gravel. During the Slush series the surface was too fresh, too soft, and did not stand up well to sticky tires. With four more months of cure time, the surface was greatly improved providing more traction than prior to the recoating, but was still giving up some of it's sand, making off-line excursions a slippery affair. Cochairs Navid Kahangi and Jim Ochi called on Charlie Davis who gave us one of his ever turning courses. A medium fast right hander after the lights providing little grip on the outside at the exit was followed by a fast sweeper leading to a narrowing kink requiring careful placement of the car entering the sweeper. A slightly downhill hard braking zone caught out many a rookie who understeered around the next turn leading to a good traction left and an off camber right that hand to be sacrificed to get good acceleration onto the only straight path on the course albeit through several apparent chicanes. A tight left right left finish also required a sacrifice and hard braking to get the proper line through the essentially slalom finish. Those failing to brake adequately found themselves beyond the proper entry point, and at least one driver who took the preceding corner at maximum found himself off course in a lurid slide that took out the timers. All in all, another easy to follow but technical course with few options to alter one's line. Due to the accumulation of sand, fast time of day belonged to the early runners as it had last November. In the first group the F125 Karts and OSP cars went for it. Darren Madams produced the best scratch time but a two second cone penalty pushed him back to seventh fastest on the day and second in class to Jason Shadd. Joey delos Trinos reshod his Corolla with Hoosier Autocrossers to take top time of day with codriver Louie Martinez second in the OSP class followed by Tito Solis, Archie Collantes, and Mert Solis in their Starlets. OSP looks to be a real race this year with Joey not committed to the full season. In Junior Karts Cameron Kahangi took Elyse Mottaz and Amanda Kahangi while Chris Spencer missed the proper run group with what would have been a second best time. In the new Street Modified class Jim Zalesny made it two in a row for the Talon, this time over Eric Typpo in a Supra, Gabe Jiminez in a VW GTI, and three other drivers. Nine rookies in Group 1 were lead by George and Soslan Kibilov in a 300ZX and Stanton Lee in a Corolla. In the second group Rich Urschel, Lotus Elan, found 2 seconds on his final run to post second fastest time of day and first in A Prepared over John Kelly. Eight drivers ran in F Street Prepared with Marty Nygaard, VW Rabbit GTI, taking Durk Edwards, Corolla, and Scott Fraser, VW Rabbit. E Stock dropped to only three drivers with Ed Chang again taking it in his Civic Si, this time over Kelly Alexander in a Honda del Sol. H Stock again had five drivers with one running out of group; honors going to Larry Sharp in his second outing in the Ford Focus, Au Nguyen, Integra, and Darrell Newcomb in a VW Cabrio. Fourteen rookies were led by Stan Guidowo in an E Stock CRX HF (that's the fifty mile per gallon version if memory serves), Calvin Wan running his Corolla in FSP this time, and Round 1 winner Jeremy Bergsman in an Integra. Group 3 had 14 running in E Street Prepared with Jim Ochi going clean this time to take first in his BMW M3 over Kirk Meline in his Mustang, and Jerry Brown in his, are you ready for this, BMW 635 Csi. Several noteables were well back struggling with the Oakland sand. Twelve rookies again chased Michael Santos, Mustang, with Chris Warner, Talon, second, and Peter Petredis, VW GTI, third. In the final morning group Patrick Jones had company in D Stock taking Patrick Simmons by 3/10ths with Dan Williamson another 3/10ths back. All were in Neons. G stock is shaping up to be a Mottaz/Wills race with Peter setting best PAX time of the day a full second over Jesse. Jason Liao picked up third in his Camaro. D Street Prepared saw but three with Ben Martinez in the real Capri taking Donald Lew in the Supra. G Stock Integras dominated the rookie group with Carlos Gomez, George Chiou, and Dan Pieracci taking the top three spots. In the afternoon A Stock was strictly a Porsche affair with Jerry Mouton, Carrera, springing a winning final run on Dan de Gruchy, 911, and 1999 Champ David Colman, Boxster. Judy Colman, 1999 ASL Champ, bested Shelly Berg, Porsche 911. B Stock saw Craig Boyle madly changing to street tires in the paddock, good for a third run but 4/10ths better than Mark Halliday who was three tenths quicker than Andrew Jensen. All in Miatas of course. C Stock, looking like the second Miata class, had Dennis Armstrong turning the tables on Scot Zediker, with Sherry Grantz in an RX7 claiming third. Eleven rookies were headed by Doug Ostler AS Boxster, Geoff Wing, BS Miata, and round 1 winner Kevin Kluge, AS BMW M3. Eleven drivers competed in C Street Prepared in group 6 with Cory Smith, Audi, handing round 1 winner Don Ebaugh, Civic, a 1.6 second comeuppance, with Steve Sherwood, Audi, taking another third place finish. The Street Touring R field dropped from 21 at 3Com to only 7 at Oakland. Soebe Soekamto again topped Integra car owner Chok Balmaceda with Mark Watson picking up third. There was story going around Oakland that Chok was messing with the shocks before Soebe's runs but couldn't slow him down. It's too good of a story for a reporter to risk spoiling by trying to verify it. The rookie group grew from 9 at round 1 to 14 at round 2. Adrian Tang moved his Subaru down to the rookie group to grab top honors over Andrew Emon, Nissan SE-R, and Nanda Holz, Miata. Group 7 came up short except in A Street Prepared where 1999 BSP Champ Don Campbell claimed the day with a Viper over Rob Boynton, Porsche 993TT, Rich Coffin, Porsche 911, and 3 other drivers. Super Stock had but 3 entries with Don McKenna on the wrong tires (street Firestones) winning any way when Kevin Stevens on tired Hoosier Radials picked up a cone penalty on his last run. Kevin extracted some revenge on the cone by kicking several grid markers into a pile for easier end of day cleanup. Chris Cox did some early and late fun runs in Don's Gran Sport to provide empirical evidence that the course did not slow down during the day if you kept to the clean line. The rookie group again saw a small field, this time of completely different drivers from Round 1, with David Stone, SS RX7, Kevin McKinnie, SS Corvette, and Brian Weber, SS BMW M Coupe posting the best times. The last group had plenty of daylight with 19 on street tires and 3 in the PAX class. Katie Kelly saved the honor of the latter by taking second best PAX time of the day and the class win over MR2 car owner Phil Esra, and cochair Navid Kahangi, BMW M3. Phil was off looking for a lug nut as the group began the first runs. The Rowney route in the Street Tire class changed complexion as Dave picked up the win in the BMW 328i with Jim back in third behind David Parker, 300ZX.