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Our resident hot-shoe Opel driver, Jim MacMahon, was denied a repeat of the success he had last year in the NARRC (North Atlantic Road Race Championship). He was a virtual shoe-in as this year's winner, needing to finish only in the top four IF the second place points winner won the race, held today at Lime Rock Park.
Early on, Jim shot into the second place spot and held it for over 3/4 of the race, with no threats from any other drivers in class and only about 6 car lengths behind the class leader (who was the same person who held the second-in-points position). Well, about 6 laps from the end Jim downshifted into 3rd gear entering turn 1, and the gear failed completely, which cause his car to spin off the track. Jim recovered, but now had only 4th gear to use on the uphill back section of the track, and only through severe over-driving was able to retain an 8th place spot in class. So while the NARRC championship went to Scott Carlson, a Volvo-driving native of Burlington, VT, Jim did manage to win the NERRC (New England Road Race Championship).
Jim says he'll take next year off while he settles into his new home, and will put some effort into revamping the car entirely in time for the 2004 season, with some performance improvements and a new maintenance schedule designed to avoid failures such as the one that cost him the championship today.
On other fronts, Tom Drake, another driver of an Opel GT (GT-4 class), handily won his class at the same track event, making it 4 class wins in 4 straight events. Next year, Tom intends to improve his car's performance and flexibility by changing from sidedraft Weber carburetors to individual-runner fuel injection. Yours truly will be helping to design and fabricate a specialized intake manifold to gain maximum performance from the change to fuel injection, and together we hope to crack the 'magic' 200 hp barrier with a normally aspirated 1.9 litre Opel engine.
Bob Legere
Early on, Jim shot into the second place spot and held it for over 3/4 of the race, with no threats from any other drivers in class and only about 6 car lengths behind the class leader (who was the same person who held the second-in-points position). Well, about 6 laps from the end Jim downshifted into 3rd gear entering turn 1, and the gear failed completely, which cause his car to spin off the track. Jim recovered, but now had only 4th gear to use on the uphill back section of the track, and only through severe over-driving was able to retain an 8th place spot in class. So while the NARRC championship went to Scott Carlson, a Volvo-driving native of Burlington, VT, Jim did manage to win the NERRC (New England Road Race Championship).
Jim says he'll take next year off while he settles into his new home, and will put some effort into revamping the car entirely in time for the 2004 season, with some performance improvements and a new maintenance schedule designed to avoid failures such as the one that cost him the championship today.
On other fronts, Tom Drake, another driver of an Opel GT (GT-4 class), handily won his class at the same track event, making it 4 class wins in 4 straight events. Next year, Tom intends to improve his car's performance and flexibility by changing from sidedraft Weber carburetors to individual-runner fuel injection. Yours truly will be helping to design and fabricate a specialized intake manifold to gain maximum performance from the change to fuel injection, and together we hope to crack the 'magic' 200 hp barrier with a normally aspirated 1.9 litre Opel engine.
Bob Legere
