Chattanooga Region drivers competed in four separate road race events during the month of March. Three of those were regional races, described here, and one was a professional event. The professional event was the Speed World Challenge Touring race held at Sebring, Florida as an opener for the prestigious annual 12 Hours of Sebring. For details on Dr. Jim Osborn and Ken Dobson's Sebring adventures, go to www.chilipepperracing.org (external link). 

Before I go into details about the regionals I would like to publicly thank Carl Blevins, Ruthie Cartlidge, Chuck Fullgraf, Misty Henderson, Dave Hester, Gail Perry, Will Perry and Theresa Silegren, all of whom served as crew, and Jamie Hamilton, Dave Hester, Bill Perry and Gail Perry who served as race workers. Without the workers and crew there would be no races for drivers to have fun at. You may notice that some of these names appear twice. That's because those people pulled double duty as both crew and worker!

March 1-2, 2003 -- Road Atlanta SARRC/ECR

The first weekend in March found us at Road Atlanta for an ECR and a SARRC. Anthony Henderson drove Formula Vee, and Will Perry and I drove our Hondas in ITC. The IT SARRC race on Saturday afternoon was held in typical drizzly weather for this time of year, but with an especially slippery twist. Someone from a previous session had dropped a considerable amount of oil from turn one through the esses after turn four. Of course, there wasn't enough rain to wash the oil off. Just enough to make that section of track a skating rink where drivers had to tiptoe through each lap. Will chose rain tires and finished first, while I finished third.

The Sunday morning enduro started with questionable skies, but soon cleared to very nice racing weather. I managed to win the ITC class after a couple of close calls with cars spinning around me early in the race, and an intense battle, complete with nail biter finish, with ITC competitor Ken Stegall on the last lap.

Anthony finished third in a clean SARRC race on Sunday afternoon.

"March Mayhem" was broken in to parts for web publication.
Part 1     Part 2     Part 3

2003 Races

November
   ARRC
October
   VIR School
   Roebling Road
August
   Road Atlanta
July 
   Road Atlanta
June
   Charlotte
May
   Kershaw
April
   Roebling Road
March
   VIR
   Birmingham
   Road Atlanta

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