NASA Northeast turned up the heat at its second event this year at New Jersey Motorsports Park Aug. 3-5, offering a competition licensing school, test and tune, sprint races, a fun race, TT and HPDE. Feeling more like Florida than New Jersey, the weather also joined in with 95 degree heat and 95 percent humidity all weekend.
The fun race session debuted this weekend at NJMP, giving new and old racers alike a chance to have practice starts and a taste of wheel-to-wheel racing on Friday before any of the official sprint races for the weekend were scheduled. Additionally, we hosted round four of the Global Time Attack Born To Run Series, with cars traveling in from all parts of the country.
Eighteen NASA classes were represented in the race groups, with GTS3 being the largest at 15 cars. Mark Lounsbury in his No. 151 BMW E36 led the field for first place with a 1:13.644. Fastest lap of the weekend went to Kurt Hissong in an SU Mustang, which burned up the track at 1:06.70. The heat continued as five track records were broken this weekend: Joe Fuchs GTS2 BMW E36 at 1:15.003, Randy Petschauer Spec Miata at 1:19.406, Patrick McParland came in with a 1:15.766 in his HC1 S2000. Also breaking track records were Vincent Allegretta 1:10.216 in AIX Camaro and Joe Catapano running GTS5 in his GT3 Porsche with 1:09.05. TT was filled with 25 drivers, and the fastest time of the day on Saturday went to Michael Ellis in the No. 9 Grand Prix running TTU at 1:09.453.
The barbecue grills — and chefs — were fired up on Saturday night for a NASA feast following the day’s trophy presentations and raffle prizes. A “couple of hundred pounds” of sausage, burgers and chicken followed by Joey G’s famous pasta satisfied even the largest appetites. With all that food, the keg stations were very busy all night!
We managed to keep everyone hydrated all weekend even in the extreme heat with more than 1,100 bottles of water and Gatorade distributed by the staff. A late-night showing of the movie “Senna” under the stars topped off a great day at the track. Throughout the weekend, Facebook posts gave attendees the opportunity to win prizes as well as keep them updated on schedule changes and announcements. A special thanks to John Lindsey, Greg Gill, Will Faules and Jon Felton for their help and support throughout the weekend.
