September 15: Under mixed weather conditions during Saturday’s practice, Brain Shorey, Jonathan Kirshtein and I were present in support of the Scuderia. I gather that the rest of the AONE members were either getting ready for the Castle Hill Concours d’Elegance or at Indianapolis for the Formula One Grand Prix.

When I finished my instruction (I was still a student until the next day), I had to perform flagging duties. Sitting in the tower on top of the hill by Turn 8, I had the grandest view of the entire track! I watched Jonathan in his powerful GTV-6, and what a site it was—this machine is FAST!!! I clocked him doing 1 min 24 sec on the North Oval/South Chicane configuration.

On "race day", only Brian and I showed up. Again, mixed rain and dry, but it got dry by the start of time trials. Three hot laps and I beat my rival Toyota MR2 by a mere 1/2 second with a time of 1:33.139. I guess the difference was in nailing Turns 1 and 2 so that you could get maximum speed, since you were carrying the momentum from building up speed starting at the "Oval Turn 3" all the way to the end of the start-finish line.

Brian picked up 5 points in the PC class by placing 4th. I believe his class should really be SPC, but he thought that having flared fenders on his spider would create a conflict. But, bottom line, he was there to have fun, and under these mixed rain and shine conditions I believe he got all the fun one can have in a weekend.

October 15: The Scuderia was supported by Eliot Shanabrook and myself. Jonathan showed up for Saturday’s practice but did not race on Sunday.

On the second session of practice, I experienced a broken fuel injector line and that put me on the sidelines with a DNS (did not start). The good news is that none of my rivals with who I am closely competing showed up, and I got 2 points for showing. That was enough to put me in first place by a margin of one point in the classification. Not bad for a fruitless Sunday drive! I was struggling to get this fixed, as I had no experience with fuel injection (all of my previous Alfas had carbs), and it was nice to have Eliot step in to try to fix my problem. But my Alfa was pushed onto an open trailer, exposed for all to see that it is a true racing machine, while I drove the bonne-homme’s Porsche 944 (now that’s a U-boat!) and there were many looks

It was another warm, sunny day at NHIS. During the second practice session, Stephan’s #1 fuel line broke and Tyler made shrapnel out of his right front wheel bearing while traveling 85mph on the south oval. He was passing me on the inside when he started drifting toward me. I looked at the front wheel just feet from me and saw plumes of smoke coming out. After getting the 510 safely to the infield, he managed to get the bearing locally and replace it in time for his timed laps. See a pattern here? For his trouble he got first place, beating a quick spec Miata. For Stephan, however, there are no Alfa fuel injection lines at Robbins Autoparts in Concord, NH!

Championship hopes? I was a little disappointed to be beaten by an early 90’s Integra like my winter beater, but I got Second anyway. I flat-sided a tire down to the cord, so I’m not sure if I’ll make LRP in November. They are unattainable second-generation R1’s, so I can’t replace the one, and I don’t want to get a new set of tires at the end of the season.