NASA's First 2009 Race Weekend - VIR

NASA Mid-Atlantic held their first 2009 event Feb 21-22 at VIR. It was a cold and sometimes rainy weekend. Many of the NASA regulars stayed home from this early season event. Road Race Technologies of Dulles had their newly-built E36 325is entered in the GTS-2 class. (It is built for mainly for SCCA ITR competition) Driver Barry Battle qualified the car with the Thunder race group, but was then told he was to be running in the Stinger race. So despite having the fastest time, Barry had to start at the back of the 55-car field in Saturday's 8-lap race. Regardless, the white RRT BMW finished first overall. Barry took an overall Stinger race win on Sunday too.

In the SpecE30 class, NCC-er Robert Grace was completing in his second weekend ever. After some coaching by "Setup" hotshoe Mike Skeen, Robert qualified 2nd with a 2:18.576. The top three SpecE30 finishers in the race were Michael Davidson, Chris Cobetto, and Carter Hunt. Robert was 7th and our other local, Skip Bennett, was 10th after some issues.
Jon McAvoy of Arlington won the new Spec3 class with his E36 325 over James Packer. Sunday the top SpecE30 finishers were Jon Allen, Carter Hunt, and Carlton Goldthwaite. Grace was 5th and Bennett 7th. McAvoy and Packer again were 1-2 in Spec3. Doug Pascarella drove his E36 M3 to 1st in the GTS-3 class during Saturday's Thunder race, but failed to finish on Sunday.

If anyone has more information of interest from the weekend, let us know.