SCCA: Buttonwillow Raceway Park report 


>From John P.M. Dillon


Labor Day National
Buttonwillow Raceway Park


copyright 1996 John P. M. Dillon


Buttonwillow, California, Labor Day weekend.  An event of staccato 
phrases.  New asphalt, improved track patches.  Intense competition.  
Last National of the season. Hot, hot, hot.  Expected results, and 
unexpected.  Aggressive warning black flags to cut down on driver 
errors.  Mixed success.  Decimated lap records.  Bottom line..Racing 
excitement under the San Joaquin valley sun.  


The Cal Club board secured sponsorship and purchased several awnings to 
provide relief for the workers between sessions.  The Turn 11 awning 
gave up its life in the line of duty as a gust of wind blew it across 
the track, but the shade it provided to that point was well worth the 
expense.


Stan Townes, FF winner and new lap record holder, admitted to having a 
good start.  "Paul [Wittrock] hung in there for a while, then he dropped 
a wheel in Turn 10 and spun it."  He praised the new track material; "it 
held together really good."  He also felt fortunate in traffic.  "The 
traffic stayed out of the way.  The Vees, 440's, and back Fords always 
pointed and were very nice to me."  


Mark Edwards finished at the top of the FV heap.  Edwards told us that 
he and Brian McCarthy discussed FV strategy before the race.  "If you 
baubled once you could still win, but if you made two, you couldn't.  
When a Ford got under him [McCarthy, leading at the time], he dropped 
his left front wheel."  The resulting spin ripped an oil plug out of 
McCarthy's car and left him parked in the Turn 2 dirt.  Brian Harding 
recounted  "I was racing with Marc Danziger for 3rd and 4th.  He spun at 
the halfway point, but chipped away at me afterwards.  Then I spun in 10 
one lap from the end, giving him what turned out to be second place."  
(In the Monday Regional race, Harding won, then stopped and gave his 
checkered flag to the Turn 10 worker from the day before.)


Bob Whyte vanquished Eric Christensen for F440 honors, well ahead of 
Kurt Jechel, long-absent from the F440 ranks.  Jechel appeared to have 
handling problems; he slipped off course at the button hook (Turn 15), 
again at Turn 1, before parking his car for good in Turn 10.  However, 
he set a new lap record prior to his 12th-lap retirement.


New Hampshire immigre Michael Scully introduced the S2000-classed SR-71, 
a car he built with Steven Johnson, to the left coast.  Scully notched a 
new track record and finished several positions ahead of second-in-class 
Karl Luft.  Luft in turn barely held off Jeff Littrell by less than a 
half second.  This was Scully's first race ever in the division.  "The 
ability to go flat through the high speed corners" was his secret.  He 
didn't like the 2.68 mile track at first, but admitted "once you learn 
which way it goes it's a hell of a lot of fun."  He claimed to have put 
the car in "cruise mode" just past the halfway mark.


Overall winner Dan Vosloo set a new FA record, as did SCA winner Sherif 
Fathy sponsored by Deaf Motorsports.  Fathy plans to run the pro-SCA 
race at the new Vegas oval track in mid September.  Mark Peller, the FC 
winner, tried to beat the Atlantics, "but we could only keep up 
halfway."  A broken diffuser slowed him down at midpoint, thanks to the 
"Peller Race Engineering demon."  He added "It was a real thrash the 
last couple days, so it's gratifying to win, even if it wasn't first 
overall."  Other class winners in the group were Bill Lomenick (DSR) and 
Justin Ferguson (CSR).    At the end, a full quarter of the field had to 
be retrieved from the course by Cal Club's emergency crew.  


Northwest Region driver Mike Rockett made his southerly tow worthwhile, 
driving his GT1 Camaro to win the GT/Production race, finishing over 30 
seconds ahead of James Vaughn's Pontiac Trans-Am.  A pair of lap record-
setting cars followed next: John Stott (GT2 Mazda) and Dan Snow (FP Fiat 
X1/9).  Snow won despite an early spin on Space Mountain (Turn 11).  
Three more drivers set records as well on their way to respective class 
victories:  Bruce Powers (GT5 Renault), Arizona's Bob Coffin (GT3 
Mazda RX3), and Roger Karlson (EP Elva).  A first-lap first-turn 
incident between Dale White and and Mike Stoney left Stoney knocked out 
for the remainder of the session, while White could only complete a 
couple of laps before damage did him in as well.


If you've been around the division for any amount of time in Spec Racer, 
you know Lee Fleming.  The hot-shoe has set plenty of track records and 
notched plenty of victories in Renault-powered machines over the years.  
Now he's racing in a new Ford-powered car on his way to Mid-Ohio.  
Fleming showcased his talent again by handily conquering the Spec Racer 
field.  His closest competitor, Arizona's Cameron Earnshaw, languished 
seven seconds behind at the checker, having to contend with T.J. Acker 
for much of the race.  Barney Moen, a Renault holdout, won in class 
while adding a track record to his trophy case.  With the demise of the 
class at year's end, chances are good that Moen will hold the record for 
all time.  Dan Spaethe, who frequently crews for Fleming, proved his 
past SR experience needs to be rust-proofed just a wee bit.  He spun 
twice and slipped off course several times, mustering a 
7th-in-class finish.  It turned out his oil cap was missing, dribbling 
40-weight onto the tires and causing him to slip in his own goo.  One 
other incident deserves mention:  at the start of the race, a crew 
member refused to follow directions of the pit marshals and nearly had 
his drivers fined.  At $100 per car, it looked like pockets would be 
lightened by $400, but in the end the operating steward allowed the 
drivers to take care of the problem themselves.


Nasport brought their show to town, which Canadian Collin Jackson 
enjoyed from the top.  His Nissan 240sx proved fastest at the end, 
though Mike Lewis defined the track record en route to a second place 
finish.  Lewis led the first three laps before leaving the surface in 
Turn 15, then charged hard near the end to briefly regain the lead on 
the penultimate lap.  He couldn't make it stick, however, as the results
show.  Both Jackson and Lewis had adhesion problems on the last lap in 
Turn 15, but Jackson edged back onto the course sooner for the win.  
John Olsen won the GT-4 category.


An aborted start forced the field to cool their jets for a lap, but at 
the end Robert Nagle, another record-setting driver, put his Mustang in 
victory circle over four other AS cars including the Camaro of Steve 
Anderson.  Prior to the start, Anderson predicted that "Nagle should be 
tough," and so he was; Anderson crossed the stripe less than a third of 
a second behind Nagle.  Anderson added "Hopefully we'll keep it cool and 
not melt down so we can take it to Mid-Ohio."  We don't know about the
car, but the action was _hot_.  The two swapped the lead at least four 
times, while Steve Kelso, Brent Olsen, and Kirk Robe all tried to horn 
in on the fun.  At the finish, only Robe was still running, thus 
securing him a spot on the podium; he proved to be the last car on the 
lead lap as well.


With the exception of SSC, every other class winner in the group set a 
new track record:  John Snow in GP, David Ahlheim in SSB, and Tim Brecht 
in SSA.  Paul Bonaccorsi had to content himself with merely earning the 
SSC victory over Bill Hagerty.  In an excellent Miata battle, Eric 
Morehouse crossed the line ahead of Ahlheim in SSB, but was later 
disqualified for rough driving in Turn 4.  Contact calls filled the 
pages of the log, interspersed with several pages of "handling 
related" calls; cars spun or left the track all around the course, 
perhaps due to the heat of the tires, cars, and drivers.  Or maybe just 
because it was the last National of the season. 










Jack Durbin                                   indy500@freenet.tlh.fl.us
Motorsport News International                      jackd@motorsport.com
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