Thanks for putting this weekend together Matt!

The Nissan team had a blast! Of course, we were only 1 of 2 T2 cars at the track, we still had a great time. I drove on Saturday, and a co-worker of mine drove on Sunday... For our work team, we have to submit Monday morning race reports, so I'll share it here too...

Saturday Race Report

Dry, ideal racing weather continues to avoid me! We woke up Saturday morning at 5:00 am to a heavy rain storm and floods that nearly carried Ben’s tent away… my van’s roof sounded like it was being shot by mortar fire, not the best sleeping conditions! The rain stopped around 8:00 am, and we were qualifying around 10:00 am, we felt confident that we would get a dry run. The track simply refused to dry! My session, Group 5, consisted of Spec Racer Fords, Showroom Stock, and T2 (us). Qualifying went well enough, even in semi-damp conditions, to get the tank… um… 350Z, to the front of the field, with a lap time of 1:43.1 (which is actually the best we’ve run at Mid-Ohio on the Club Course…). The newly installed Front and Rear Koni shocks were not even remotely set-up, and the car was pushing all over the place. Between sessions, I made some changes to shock set-up that would hopefully help balance the car. I had high hopes for a dry race! Leading up to race time, the track was soaked multiple times by sporadic rain storms, however it looked like the rain had stopped just before my session and the track would dry sometime during it. We decided to run on dry tires to avoid the inevitable burn-up of the wet tires if the track dried. At the 3-minutes before race start mark, the sky opened up and drenched the track… I knew I was in for a rough time! Many of the Spec Racer Ford’s had rain tires, and weigh about 1,500 lbs. less! As I brought the 30 car field around to an ideal pace for the Z, the green dropped and I was first to turn 1 by about 5 car lengths, entering turn 2, I was in 7th position! The combination of the Z’s weight, dry tires, and RR wheel drive made the car near undriveable! I decided to limp the car around the track and try to take the T2 victory. About ˝ way through the race, a leader was making his way around the track to lap me, at the end of the back straight. Clearly, this guy was a little over-excited that he had rain-tires, and decided to lean on the Z-car to keep himself on the track… He sent me about 15 feet into the grass! Not missing a beat, he spun the car 2 corners later! I had to stop where he was and let him know how I felt about his maneuvers After our brief conversation, I continued the miserable race and brought the car home in 1st with no body damage, just a small FR tire slice from the Spec Racer incident. In impound, the driver of the other T2 car had this to say, “Man, , must be nice to have front wheel drive and rain tires!”… He was referring to the 350Z, and he was serious :P At least there was some humor to conclude an otherwise ugly race!


On another note, I LOVE watching the ITA, SM race, something about the cars and the competitiveness just make it the best race Goran had a spectacular race on Saturday, holding off Kevin for the win, congrats! Kevin decided to get serious on Sunday and went medieval on the rest of the field, nobody was even close... At the beginning of the Sunday race, in the rain, I watched 5 cars continually pile into China Beach at the end of the straight, we actually have a picture of 5 cars sitting in the gravel (all entering on their own accord!) I hate rain.

- Joe Moser