Hat-tip and credit to Will Robbins for all photos. Check out the rest of the gallery from Saturday here.
The first Match Tour of the year has come to a close, and it was an exciting weekend in the land of Corvettes. Class competition wrapped up on Saturday - you can read about that here - which meant that Sunday morning was relatively laid back, as competitors were tasked with putting down their best runs to qualify for one of the two Shootouts at the end of the day. The top 8 in PAX in each heat would move on to qualify for the Super Shootout, while positions 9-16 in each heat would populate the Club Shootout. Remember that this isn't a Championship Tour, and the course does not change from Day 1 to Day 2, so drivers would get at least three more chances at the course to squeeze out a little more speed.
Heat 1 saw a combination of course familiarity, cooler temperatures, and slightly overcast conditions lead to drastically reduced times compared to Saturday. Many drivers were improving over their Saturday times by a second or more, and commenting that their cars were simply working better. Jadrice Toussaint, John Laughlin, David Feighner, and Dick Rasmussen in FS all saw this improvement immediately and took advantage of it on run 1. Similar results were being seen in CS. At the end of the heat, it would be Toussaint leading the way on PAX, followed closely by Laughlin in 2nd, and yours truly in 3rd.
In the second heat, time improvements were less noticeable. The course had warmed up and seemed to be relatively slower compared to heat 1. Still, this didn't stop FSP from becoming even more of a knock-down-drag-out fight to the finish. Scott Giles sent a message quickly with an immediate jump deeper in the 44-second territory, a feat only matched in the class by Steven Duckworth and Nick Myers, of which the latter was able to accomplish by making some rear geometry changes to his Corolla overnight. Myers had found the confidence in the car again and was able to push on to the Super Shootout. Giles, Duckworth, and Myers would be 1-2-3 respectively in the heat, and FSP would take five of the top 8 Super Shootout spots.
For the last heat, it would come down to SSR and SSM to fight over the top PAX positions. Sam Strano would again come out of the gate strong to lead the way, with Brian Johns close behind. But you wanted to pay attention to Dave Montgomery over in FP, who had seemed to struggle the day before getting the car up to speed. On his last run, he was able to throw down a smoking 42.0 run to go straight to the top of the PAX chart. Strano would end up dropping out of the challenge for the sake of saving tires for Shelly Monfort, so the top PAX for heat 3 would shake out to be Montgomery, Johns, and Monfort.
After a short break and some swapping around of grid spots, we move on now to the first Shootout of the day. Match Tours are not ProSolos, and therefore the Super Shootout goes first. The way it works is that the top 8 in each heat go against themselves, to come up with an eventual winner from each heat grouping, leaving the final round of each Shootout to be a 3-way simultaneous battle.
The final round in the Super Shootout was all about the S-names - it would wind down to be Scott Dobler from heat 1, Scott Giles from heat 2, and Shelly Monfort from heat 3, with Dobler the first to leave. Dobler would make a bit of an oopsie and leave his traction control on, limping away from the start line. Giles would follow to put down a 44.4-second run, a mere .3 off of his fastest breakout run from earlier in the Shootout, which put him in a good position for the win. Monfort would end up coning her run in the initial turn-around on course, but put down a fantastic 43.6 raw time, a time good enough to nearly match her dial-in, and be only .3 away from boy-toy co-driver Sam Strano. Without the cone, Monfort would have been declared the winner, but it would be Giles walking away with the Super Shootout overall victory.
Between the larger Super and Club Shootouts was the Bonus Shootout - just like with ProSolos, the Bonus Shootout is comprised of folks drawn at random who did not qualify for one of the other shootouts. This meant it was anyone's game, and with varying skill levels in play, breakouts were common and made the competition exciting. At the end of the session, it would be John Willett in an HS Fiesta ST that would be your Bonus Shootout winner.
In the last Shootout of the day - the Club Shootout - the mechanics work exactly the same as they do in the Super Shootout: each heat runs against themselves to narrow down to three drivers. The heat 1 representative would be Chris Harp from CS, heat 2 would come down to Cody Mason from CSP, and heat 3 would be represented by Bryan Schafer from SSR. Harp would be first to course and have a bit of overdriving drop him off of his dial-in, but Cody Mason would clear the course quickly, putting in his best time of the weekend just inside the 43-second bracket and breaking out considerably. Schafer would also put a strong run in, but not quite strong enough to overcome Mason's breakout, handing the win of the Club Shootout over to Mason.
At the end of the day, many people praised the new format of the Match Tour, and Brian Harmer and crew put on a fantastic event. If you ever had any doubts about Match Tours, then fear no more - you get a lot of runs, against great competition, on awesome pavement, for not a lot of money. What more can you ask for? Be sure to stay tuned for the next round of the Match Tour season in Moultrie, GA!
