What a great day 1 at El Toro. Beautiful weather and a pair of fun courses provided a great atmosphere for the first stop of the Tire Rack SCCA Prosolo Series. As we have become accustomed to, the site layout with mirrored loop courses provided the 230+ competitors with plenty of unique and challenging features. Starting the day off were the junior karters and ladies classes. The battle for first in JA is super tight with only 0.046 seconds separating Zak Kiesel and Kevin Jung while JB's current leader, Robert Eckstrand has a little more breathing room over Johan Yost. Christine Grice has a pretty sizable lead in L1 while Shelley Monfort is showing why she is the current SCCA Driver of Eminence with a 1 second lead in L2. The largest of the ladies classes, L3, is looking to be anyone's game with several drivers all within 1 second of the current day 1 leader, Lisa Berry.
Group 2 saw DS, ES, FS and GS. Proving his worth to his sponsors, Max Hayter is currently leading DS in what is almost spec WRX. Vernon Jolley holds a scant quarter second lead in ES while Sean O'Boyle's lead in FS is even smaller at 0.1 seconds! Mark Scroggs is working hard on earning his alien status and leads GS by a healthy 2.6 seconds.
In group 3, Glen Hernandez is leading AS but James Yom with cone and red light issues will be looking to change that on Sunday. Another exciting class today was CS with only a few tenths separating the trophy spots. Right now Adrian Cardenas is sitting atop. Jonathan Lugod is currently on top of STU and proving a strong case for the Corvette although his lead over Jeff Stuart is nothing more than a blink of an eye. This weekend's largest class, BS, is showing nice parity with Ryan Buetzer's Pontiac Solstice leading the Honda and Corvette of Alex Muresan and Brian Coulson. It's a Fiesta in HS (pun intended) with Navid Kahangi currently holding the bullseye on his back. As many would expect, Brian Peters is looking strong atop an all Mustang ESP field.
A quick look through the results and you'll see a decent mix of street tires in the trophies. Of course the latest craze Bridgestone is a common theme on the podium but the Hankooks and even Dunlops appear to not be dead just yet.
Unfortunately for many competitors, day 1 will actually continue on day 2 as slightly longer courses mixed with some small timing issues pushed the event to run just a tad bit slower than everyone had hoped. Could this be an advantage for those drivers in the later run groups? Day 2 at El Toro is normally the day where the classes are won as the rubbered in courses are historically way faster. Stay tuned in to the ustream broadcast and keep an eye on solo live tomorrow as we'll find out who rises to the top.
