Heart of Dixie June 17-19, Nashville

[TomL]

Unfortunately, not a whole lot. Chuck Hines and Jeff Young qualified upfront with the STU Miata of Tom Neel. Chuck and Neel took off at the start, while Jeff, who had been smoking in qualifying, was barely faster than me for a few laps. Then I passed him and he went into the pits. I was fourth OA at that point, but then I got passed by a pair of Miatas leading ITA (John Waight and Clayton Pannell) and the 240Z of David Plott. I got to watch them battle for the rest of the race which ended Plott, Waight, Pannell. The only other ITSs were Michael Jordan in a 944 who finished at few places behind me and Dennis Cross (240SX) who didn't make the start. Neel passed Chuck on the last lap to win overall.

Jeff must have had something major and didn't make it out on Sunday. Chuck had a long trip home (and now has 6 wins) so he decided to pass as well. Jordan and Paul Ballance had the only ITS cars and they finished 6 and 8 overall. Only eight cars total, since we lost Jeff, Chuck and a few others.

There was some heavy rain on Saturday (not during our races fortunately) which didn't help turnout. I enjoyed the weekend as always - great folks- but I sure wish we could get more people to attend.

[JeffYoung]

Total fail weekend. Plug wire fell off in race, was running on 7 cylinders, and brand new tranny was leaking like a sieve. Yay.

Congrats to Chuck, et. al. for the good drives.

[240zdave]

This is a repeat of what I posted on another thread, so bear with me. I want to thank Paul for asking me to drive his car in the Saturday SARRC race. I was great to be driving a Z car after almost 4 years of not racing. It was everything I could do to pass and stay ahead of John and Clayton in their Miatas. It was great fun, and I got to talk with Chuck Hines for the second time, the first time being when our cars ended up in the tire wall at Barber in 2007. That's where I met Paul, who was working that corner and handed each of us a bottle of water. So Heart of Dixie was sort of a weird reunion under much better circumstances. Jeff's unfortunate issues enabled me to get 2nd place in ITS. Admittedly small turnout, but great weekend for me.

[pballance]

I drove like a wimp on Sunday and didn't have enough tire left to get by Michael in the 944. He didn't give me any breaks to get by either and made his car as wide as possible. We had some VERY VERY close racing for multiple laps. In fact I need to get my buffing compound out At least I think it will buff right out

For what it is worth, we are looking at ALL options to make the NSS race more attractive. Changing dates, changing the course
IE maybe dropping the bus-stop and running more of the oval or dropping the infield section, using the bus-stop and running NASCAR 1-2. We are considering all options. We want to continue to race at NSS and want the racers to be happy.

[240zdave]

I vote for keeping the course as is, and changing the weekend. Maybe swap weekends with the Track Trials that were Apr 2-3 this year. The only thing about going earlier in the Spring is that we can have some pretty severe thunderstorms in this area. There doesn't seem to be a lot going on in August. I don't know what the Speedway's schedule is like for other events, though.