It’s Hyperfest time, baby, and what a weekend! Thirteen CMC racers qualified for Saturday’s race at 10-turn Summit Point Raceway, making it one of the largest Mid-Atlantic CMC fields this year.
Qualifying on Saturday resulted in a new pole-position driver for this year. Jimmy Joyce qualified with 1:25.4 on the 2.2-mile circuit. Completing the top four were David DeJarnette in a Mustang, Chris Morris in a Fox body Mustang, and his father Mike Morris in a newer Mustang.
In the first race, the CMC drivers took to the track with the rest of the Thunder group, and followed the American Iron cars. All of the CMC drivers stormed into Turn 1 as a single group. Randy Maits, driver of the No. 53 Mustang, and a former American Iron driver, remarked, “This is great racing! In American Iron, you don’t see that many cars entering the first turn of a race as a single group. Twelve equally fast cars entering Turn 1 at the same time! It was great!”
As the race progressed, Jim Joyce, DeJarnette, and Chris Morris were racing for the lead. Kent Lydic, Mike Morris and Shawn Stern raced for fourth place. Joyce, who went on to win, kept a watchful eye on DeJarnette and Chris Morris. At the end of the race, Joyce said of his closest competition, “DeJarnette was there! I was worried!”
At the end, it was Joyce in first, with DeJarnette in second and Chris Morris in third.
On Sunday, DeJarnette earned his third pole position this year, followed by Joyce, and Chris Morris in third. Sunday’s race was a longer, 40-minute extended sprint race.
Racing inside a slower car into Turn 5, Shawn Stern ran up on the curb and into the infield, stalling the car. The car reluctantly refired, but only after Stern found himself well behind the leaders. DeJarnette, while in the lead at the two-thirds mark, was overtaking Clements in the carousel, when the two cars came together slightly. Clements ended up spinning, facing oncoming traffic.
At the end of the 40 minutes, DeJarnette led Joyce by a half second. Chris Morris came in third. After eight races, Chris Morris still has the Mid-Atlantic regional CMC championship lead, but only by 11 points over David DeJarnette and Jim Joyce.
In German Touring Series racing, an epic battle formed between 2011 GTS3 National Champion Josh Smith and Eric Wong in GTS3, as well as rookie hotshoe D.J. Fitzpatrick and Michael Dayton in GTS2.
On Saturday, Smith outqualified Wong by less than half a second but the race was even closer! Wong spent the entire race on Smith’s tail. Smith attempted a few times to use traffic to his advantage, but could not get away. Smith netted the win, but Wong ended up with the lap record ahead of Smith by .019 seconds!
On Sunday, Smith again outqualified Wong, but Wong got a good start, which put him in the lead coming out of Turn 3. Running on BFGoodrich R1S tires, Wong kept Smith behind early on. Smith was on Hoosier R6s which proved to be a wiser choice as his tires started coming in while Wong’s were dropping off. This allowed Smith to increase his lead and take the Sunday win.
In GTS2, polesitter Fitzpatrick lost the lead briefly going into Tun 1 but by Turn 3, he was once again ahead of the competition. However, Dayton would not sit back without a fight. After hounding Fitzpatrick for a few laps, an opportunity arose from lapped traffic. Entering the carousel, Fitzpatrick chose the outside to get around some Spec E30s, unfortunately, those SE30s took the outside line. Dayton jumped to the inside to take the lead. Fitzpatrick regained the lead after a nice run coming out of Turn 10 and despite pressure by Dayton, was not forced into a mistake. Fitzpatrick would end up running a fast lap .019 seconds faster than Dayton.
