The 2014 Wilmington ProSolo sold out in a record 7 minutes after registration opened.
As Scott Giles would say:
Seven.
Minutes.
That meant there were a lot of people who were disappointed to see a dodgy weather forecast in the days leading up to the event. The talk Friday during registration, tech, and practice starts centered on when the rain would hit, not if it would. Going into first runs, everyone knew it was crucially important to make any dry runs count because you might not get another one.
Saturday morning runs started with a dirty surface leaving trails of dust behind the Ladies competitors. In that first group especially, grip wasn't quite what it could be. Still, the early leaders jumped out with some, like Andrew Pallotta in STX, keeping their Saturday morning runs as their best through the afternoon as well.
The slower to start folks had some hope though, as the forecast continued to improve throughout the day. Saturday afternoon runs would be dry as well, and most folks took advantage to improve. If you wanted to stay at the top of the heap, particularly if you were in the first few groups, you needed to drop lots of time over your morning runs.
Chris Harvey, running in the recently resurgent C-Street class, did just that. When Saturday's runs ended, Harvey had an uncharacteristic 8.5 tenths lead in the consistently well subscribed class. Notable was that he was doing it on Dunlop Z2s, which many in the Street category (including Harvey at other events) had abandoned in favor of the new Hankook RS3.
Street Modified was more of a dogfight. When the dust and carnage settled, PJ Corrales had the lead by a scant .073 over codriver David White. Aaron Shoe was just .052 further back after fixing car issues in the morning that saw him temporarily in the Mitsubishi Evo of Frank and Kristi Gaus during first runs. Frank, 2nd after those morning runs, was unable to improve on his left side run in the afternoon and would end the day in 4th.
In Ladies 1 Shelly Monfort put the Vitamvas BMW into a strong lead over Learic Cramer in her GT3. Everything was great in L2 and L3 so long as your name was Laura, with Laura Harbour and Laura Campbell leading each class respectively with a similarly strong margin.
One class with an uncharacteristically large gap was SRR. The east coast remains a bastion of unabashed DOT-R tire lovers from A Stock and as usual SRR had nothing but ASR cars in it, all running heads up. Paul Kozlak was having a great resurgence of form and put a six tenths gap on 2nd place Tony Savini.
As Saturday's runs closed, everyone assumed the class competition was over with a forecasted near certain chance of rain overnight and through Sunday, with the occasional tornado to spice things up. Class leaders went out to celebrate and others to drown their sorrows. Imagine the surprise when everyone arrived to see dry concrete in the morning! The promised overnight rain never materialized and the line was clean, rubbered in, and ready to deliver some upsets.
Ladies were first out, with the first cars leaving the line at the unholy, or at least early, hour of 8am. Rain and storms were forecasted to hit around 10am and everyone was antsy to run, wanting those clean runs before the rains came. While they all dropped time with the best conditions of the weekend, the leaders of L1, L2, and L3 stayed the same with Shelly Monfort, Laura Harbour, and Laura Campbell turning their Saturday advantages into wins.
The rest of C-Street finally showed up and gave Chris Harvey a run with Mark Andy regaining some form after a swap back to his old 100+ run RS3's from the new set he'd tried Saturday afternoon. Andy dropped over a second after the first pair of runs but Harvey responded and reset fast time on the right to keep the lead and take the win by .281 while Andy coned his 2nd pair of runs away.
Other classes had more of a shake up. In SSR, Josh Luster took advantage of the dry weather to drop a full half second on the right side, vaulting ahead of Grant Reeve to take the win in SSR, his first of the season. Brian Conners finished third in the controversial 997 GT3 almost 8 tenths back from Luster, closely followed by Dan Ireland in his c6 Grandsport with his best finish of the season. Conners' GT3 guest driver Corey Ridgick was 5th, and Jason Burns rounded out the trophies. One second covered first through sixth in the highly competitive class.
In SR action, Mike 'Junior' Johnson put on a show in his new A-Street c5 z06, taking the win over John Laughlin by .342 after the indexes were applied. Laughlin was piloting his equally new F-Street Shelby Mustang. Tavis Spencer, Adam Norton, and Eric Peterson rounded out the trophy spots in the 17 driver deep class. In addition to his trademark burnouts, the tricky finish had Johnson finishing backwards as often as forwards, but the times don't lie and when the tire smoke cleared, Johnson took the win.
In SF there must have been some type of memo that went out, as the top six were all G-Street cars. The Focus ST of Trevor Jones ruled the day, running times that would have raw timed Laughlin's F-Street Mustang as well as the entire C-Street field among others. Tim Carritte used his copy of the popular Focus ST to take 2nd, with Azmath Mohammed rounding out the top three in his Toyota Celica, showing the older car still had some life left in it despite the popularity of the new Focus.
Paul Kozlak kept his Saturday form in place. Every driver in SRR dropped time but Paul found the most, eventually winning SRR by a whopping .948 over Tony Savini. The strong finish put Kozlak into the challenge as the 3rd qualifier, all the more impressive given the competition in the strong ASR ranks.
Speaking of qualifying well, Darrin Seltzer earned the top qualifier spot, with a gap of 1.493 back to 2nd in class. Seltzer, 2013's Solo Rookie of the Year, was never in doubt as the winner of R1, setting that margin despite standing on his Saturday morning times after vehicle issues plagued him and codriver Greg Shumaker!
Another notable winner was Erik Strelnieks, making the trek up from Texas with both his awesome three rotor turbo RX-7 and Beth's beautiful F-Prepared Porsche Boxster. Strelnieks and his snarling RX-7 would hold Carter Thompson off for the win by .392 with Brian Johns another .161 back in a 3rd RX-7. Thompson and Johns were making do with just two rotors, but had a lighter minimum weight to go with it. Rumors were that all three cars were planning to fit wheelie bars for the Finale in Lincoln.
By the end of Sunday's class competition, everyone had unbelievably had the opportunity for twelve dry runs, something that was a laughable notion Friday afternoon. As the challenges started, the sun was peaking out on a beautiful day, despite the threatening forecast and weather radar that showed rain all around the site.
The Ladies were up first. Class winners Laura Campbell, Shelly Monfort, and Laura Harbour all made it past the first round, but Harbour's effort would end there, as she was eliminated by the always strong Chris Peterson in the family MR2. Monfort and Campbell both advanced to the round of four where Monfort faced off against Peterson and Campbell lined up opposite Jackie Mutschler. No drivers had broken out, so it was a straight up fight on their original dial ins. The class winners ruled the day, with both Monfort and Campbell advancing to the final round with Mutschle winning the run off for 3rd place. Campbell controlled the final round with Monfort coning, giving Campbell her first challenge win of the season.
The always fun Bonus challenge was next. This challenge is seeded by a random drawing from folks that didn't make the Super or Ladies Challenges. This drawing was unusual as two different sets of codrivers were picked, so there was some horse trading going on as only single driver cars are allowed into the Bonus Challenge. The fun continued as runs started, with each driver working off a dial in set by their own times vs. the class leader's times as used in the Ladies and Super Challenges. The final round pitted John Laughlin vs. Crissy Weaver in a battle of American muscle. Proving that brawn is no match for beauty, Weaver guided the family c5 z06 to a popular win that had Ben Weaver levitating in excitement.
The Super Challenge was the last competition of the day, with all the top guns duking it out to take the overall event win. With Seltzer out with car troubles, Chris Grayson took over the top qualifier spot with a 1.331 lead over 2nd place in the Bump class in his G-Street-R Focus ST. Grayson would advance all the way to the round of eight, but his day would end there in a defeat by Chris Harvey, the C-Street winner. The rest of the top four were James Cathers, Mike 'Junior' Johnson, and Andrew Pallotta. Harvey and Cathers were the first match up, both still on their original dial ins. They were followed by Johnson and Pallotta, with Johnson having already broken out once. Cathers took the first match up with Johnson holding off Pallotta. However, Johnson broke out again in the process, resetting his dial in for the final round to a full 1.2 seconds faster than his class winning times. Pallotta beat Harvey in the 3rd place runoff, ending the day all smiles with a 2013 nationals redemption victory in STX class competition over Jeff Hurst and the strong 3rd place Super Challenge points haul.
Pulling up to the line for the final round, Johnson knew he'd have a hard time satisfying his new dial in, but he gave it his all, ending his left side run in a now normal spin through the lights. The smoke and mirrors didn't work this time though and it was James Cathers taking the top spot in his Corvette. His first Super Challenge win was a product of steady advancement through his challengers, never needing to break out to advance.
The day ended with the always fun trophy presentation as fierce competitors transitioned back into close friends. First time ProSolo trophy winner Danny Kao was unable to be there to accept his hardware, but the popular driver had no less than five people fighting to accept his award.
After some event site cleanup and trailer dropoffs, the last person left the site.
It still hadn't rained.
