Kakashi Racing's Jeff Lawton Wins One in ITA!

Kakashi Racing's Jeff Lawton proved last year was no fluke, winning from the pole in ITA against strong competition.

There were a few other "firsts". Team leader Greg Amy could not make the Friday test day nor the Saturday race day, as he had been contracted to do data acquisition for a Koni Challenge ST team at Lime Rock Park. As a result, Jeremy Billiel suited up from his oh-so-brief race driving early retirement to pilot the #98 Acura Integra in ITS. I think we'll be seeing Jeremy more than a few times this year...

Also, and most unfortunately, Joe DiMinno, pilot of the #01 ITA Nissan Sentra (and current ITA NARRC points leader) suffered minor brain fade and managed to trade paint with a tire barrier. The tire barrier won. Not much harm, and no foul, and Joe was able to gather it up, finish the race, and be back in the fight again on Sunday.

Jeff Lawton

As usual, Joe and I went out for qualifying Saturday morning and managed to run nose to tail for most of the session, hurting both our qualifying times. However, Joe pulled off early letting me uncork the fastest lap of the session, and the pole for the afternoon race!

With Andy Bettencourt on outside pole and Joe in third behind me, it was going to be an interesting start. As expected, Joe used the "ITS power" of his SR20DE and went into Turn One first, with Bettencourt nipping at his heels down into Turn Three. Andy came out of three with the lead...

However, I tried to be patient and waited for Joe to run out of talent on lap two, and he complied in Turn 6; I passed him and spent the rest of the race holding off the ever-formidable Tim Klavana for the win!

Race 2 on Sunday morning was gridded by lap times from the previous race and I was on the outside pole. I had a "shifter issue" [Ed note: he missed a shift] occurred on lap three, resulting in three cars passing me. But, I put my head down, caught the lead pack and passed two cars, setting fastest race lap and finishing in third place.

Unfortunately, I was out of tires for the third race, and I struggled to keep up, finishing in 5th place.

The championship points race is heating up; the Saturn is within easy striking distance of Joe DiMinno's lead with Tim Klavana close behind...

Joe DiMinno

Jeremy Billiel

So I came into the weekend with some lofty goals and a steak dinner on the line [Ed. note: our sharp brother Jeremy managed to challenge himself -- on a public Internet forum, no less -- to a specific lap time for the weekend. Joe DiMinno, never finding a racing challenge he wouldn't pick up, accepted that via a steak dinner bet...] Oh, and I have not been in the car for about a year and I had a lot of rust to work off. So I went to the test day on Friday and worked on improving my entry into Turn 1 & 2. This was not so successful though, as every time I would chicken out [Smat. Shows he has that elusive "desire to live" gene...] By the end of the day I was a little bummed out, but I still had two days of racing to improve.

After watching the video, analysis of the data, and some coaching by Chris I was able to start knocking time off in qualifying and the race, but by the end of Sunday I did not meet the ultimate goal and damn it, now I owe Crazy Joe a steak dinner.

Congrats to Jeff on the Saturday pole and win! Congrats to Joe for making it longer than we expected with the new paint on the car [I'll say...] He still claims it was the tires, but I think he ran out of talent before he hit the wall in Turn 6...right, team line is it was a bad tire choice...story, sticking to it, and all that...

All and all, another very fun weekend in the books and more development made on the GSR [not to mention a couple of square tires and two smoking rubber lines into Turn Three...hey, just sayin'...] ITS had better be scared as we are getting faster and faster each weekend. Oh, and thanks Greg for not putting Stephanie on the radio or my ears would still be bleeding! Finally I can not forget Matt and Chris as they made the weekend so much more enjoyable for me. Thanks!

Greg Amy

As noted before, I had prior commitments for the weekend, doing data acquisition work for a Koni Challenge ST team, using the Race Technology DL-1 data logger (that all Kakashi Racing team members use) along with the Race Technology DASH-2 display system (as is installed in the #98 Integra). Thus, I was glad that Jeremy was able to (read: champing at the bit to) make it for the test and first race day. Thea, Stephanie (Jeremy's wife), and all the dogs packed into the Excursion and drove to NHMS oh-dark-thirty.

I ran DP so as not to interrupt Jeremy's ITS operations. Starting from the back I drove through the large pack to a fifth-place finish, unfortunately collecting a stubborn GTL car along the way (shrug). The afternoon race was fruitful with a 2nd in DP and third overall (no collections this time), and we learned quite a bit on the chassis setup.

By the way, if you have any driver coaching/management and/or data acquisition needs, feel free to send us a note. We'll be offering these services a lot more going forward.

Results

Day One: http://www.mylaps.com/results/showevent.jsp?id=310075

Day Two: http://www.mylaps.com/results/showevent.jsp?id=310125

Video

Joe DiMinno’s in-car:
        Race One: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2255191474546458266&hl=en
        Race Two: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4739546475636114621
        Race Three: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5326167281731732671

Jeff Lawton's in-car:
        Race One: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6657389493332982681&hl=en
        Race Three: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2265428115928265390

Jeremy Billiel In-Car:
        Sat Afternoon, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1045655076537880811&hl=en
        Sunday Morning http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5843400364834041181&hl=en
        Sunday Afternoon http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=404517054037573806&hl=en
 

Photos