March 3-4, 2001 -- For the SARRC race, Will Perry, Jamie Blair and Bill Perry qualified their ITC Hondas in positions 1, 2 & 4. By mid-race they were driving in this order, in positions 1, 2 & 3, and it was raining hard. A rookie driver, fresh from the bogus "Double" Driving School at Roebling Road, braked late into turn 10, in the wet. He locked up the wheels, so lost steering. He hit Bill's Civic in the rear end HARD. Hard enough to put them into the gravel trap and to pretty well total both cars. It folded the aluminum seat in the Civic. Will and Jamie continued to an easy 1 - 2.

Will and Jamie entered the ProIT, and qualified 1, 2. Early in the race Will had pulled out a good lead in ITC and was playing with the SPU and ITB cars. Two of them spun together in turn one, right in front of Will. They ended up nose-to-tail across the track. Will ran the CRX into the mud to miss them, and got stuck. He finally got back on the track, but in last place overall. Jamie continued in first.
 

2001 Races

November
   ARRC
October
   VIR SARRC/ECR/ECR
September
   Roebling SIC
   Road Atlanta SARRC/SARRC
July
   Road Atlanta ECR/SARRC
April
   Roebling Double SARRC
March
    Memphis Mid-Am/IT Tour
    VIR SARRC
    Atlanta SARRC/ECR/ProIT
February
     Memphis Regional
     Roebling School

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Will set a new lap record (changes to turn 8 revised all records) in trying to get back to the front. On the last lap he caught up to Jamie, but didn't make the pass. So Jamie got 1st, Will 2nd. Perhaps the outcome would have been different had not the race been shortened to 19 laps by a jump-start by the outside front row qualifier.

Vesa Silegren, Will Perry and Bill Perry were scheduled to contend the three-hour Endurance Race in Bill's now-crashed Civic. So Carl Blevins entered his #35 CRX with Vesa as co-driver.

The three Chattanooga Region rookies, Art Thompson, Rusty White and Roy Yother entered the Enduro co-driving Roy's #73 CRX (with lots of parts picked off the carcass of Bill's organ donor Civic). Vesa Started in Carl's CRX, and finished, with Carl taking the long middle stint. Roy's car went with an Art/Roy/Rusty rotation. Carl & Vesa chased Debby Anderson the whole race for the ITC lead. Debby, last year's ECR Champion did a fine "Iron Man" drive, never slowing in the three hours. They finished in second to her, 30 seconds behind after three hours.

Art totally used up the brakes on his stint, so we had to send Roy out with the warning that he was running without front brakes. More parts were robbed from Bill's Civic and its brake pads were installed on Roy's car in a quick stop. Rusty finished off with a good drive. The extra stop put them back to a fourth place finish.

-- Bill Perry