Event Results
About that conspiracy... we have come, we have seen, and there might be something to it.
Acknowledging that the May 2-3 date was a reschedule due to weather, this Mulligan provided clear, bright blue skies, without even a chemtrail contrail to conceal the sun, and temperatures crested in the mid-80's before falling into the low-60's. The surface was a familiar, small-grit, old-airforce-base concrete that yields high-grip and competitor smiles all around. The courses penned by Grady Wood and J.Jackson were befitting a Moonshining Porsche driver: that is to say surprisingly technical path for running refreshments out a holler and shaking the taxman on the drive back. From the tree, a middle width sweeper led to 6 cone slalom, morphed into a 3-offset before a technical turn-around. Large radii "S" turns gradually shortened into quick 3-slalom into a ninety degree finish turn that had multiple competitors pirouetting home. Combined with the homespun hospitality, the Blytheville Pro Solo may be THE hidden gem on the SOLO Touring Series Calendar and there is no defensible reason for that.
As promised, the Blytheville Pro had a large contingent of Solo's Illuminati. Surprising no one, Mark Madarash’s CP Firebird claimed the Super Challenge over Ricky Crow’s STR S2000. The Ladies Challenge went to Kim Whitener in the family Civic Si. In the Bonus Challenge, Dave Ogburn, Jr. won.
In class competition, Saturday's apparent top qualifier for the Super Challenge was Chris Bailey in an ES MR2, but it was of the "obsolete" 2nd Generation. Eric Peterson’s ES MR2- Spyder was the favorite and apparently missing a few legs 1.9s back. Sunday dawned, Bailey backed up his times without improving and Peterson rapidly ate up the gap with clean, precise runs. Not enough to wrap up the class win, Peterson's charge sucked the top qualifier position from Bailey.
Meanwhile, Ricky Crow saved the smoking gun run reveal for Sunday: as an overnight tire change vaulted him from 3rd, 2/10ths back into a 2.206sec win and the top Super Challenge qualifying spot. Luke Oxner, and Jon Pomrenke had no response and Lance Keeley held station in 4th.
Photograph by Dave Hardy
The disappointing story of the weekend may be that due to F-Street / CAM competitor shuffling and reshuffling, the Bump 4 class ended up having 23 competitors and more calculators than an actual moon landing. Jason Hobbs in an FM Novakar held off 3 Corvettes (Andy Hohl, Eric Stemler, Joe Tharpe), a Mini (Craig Wilcox), and a Porsche (Stan Whitney) for good measure.
Photograph by Kim Whitener
Otherwise, David Whitener in STF and Kim Whitener in L3 dispatched their respective competition faster than faked moon landing theories. Trevor Jones saw half his HS lead from Saturday vaporized by cones and Bart Hockerman's charge. The opposite was true in GS as David Spratte in a Focus ST could not mount a challenge to Brad McCann and the Hyundai Genesis in GS. The CS "Tire guy" battle went Dave Ogburn III over Chris Harvey. Andy Neilson and Zack Barnes cobbled together one functional RX8 in a week, but it wasn’t enough to catch the leaders. While past breakage was the CS story, present breakage defined the storyline in BSP where Daniel McCelvey jumped into a competitors car and proceeded to cone himself to third. Darrin Disimo in R2 found an axle and replaced to give chase to Madarash. Comparatively, there was no breakage in SSM as three beautiful cars went at it: turbo, wing, and splitter. Randall Wilcox (Miata), trumped Erik Strelnieks (RX7), and Matt Glagola.
Photograph by Zack Barnes
Once into the Super Challenge, Crow had to escape the potentially dangerous Daniel McCelvey, then work his way through John Mensch, Joe Tharpe, and Chris Harvey. Madarash as a middle qualifier had to climb past some tough competition, including Marc Osgood and Dennis Sparks, but perhaps none tougher than home region friends David Whitener (STF) and Brad McCann (GS).
Video from McCann:
