NASA Southeast Time Trial returned to Carolina Motorsports Park May 4-5 for the second of three scheduled race weekends while also marking the halfway point of the 2024 NASA Southeast season.
The weekend’s Time Trial competition at the always-challenging 2.28-mile, 14-turn circuit in Kershaw, S.C., saw periodic rain and thunder showers throughout the day and weekend, which led to more than a few drivers being forced into becoming amateur meteorologists along with their normal duties as drivers. This resulted in some last-minute decisions on whether to go with the faster and not rain-friendly DOT and non-DOT competition slicks, or to quickly throw slower tires on the cars, but which have those ever-important grooves to channel water out of the way.
Under those conditions, new track records were impossible. However, with road course racing, rain and a wet track becomes a great equalizer as competition becomes a battle of risk versus reward.
With eight entries, the TTU class was the largest group of the weekend. Saturday’s results saw a close battle for the P1 spot between the No. 111 Radical SR3 of Kade Lewis and the No. 21 Dodge Viper of Mark Kirby, with Lewis getting the better of Kirby by a scant 0.281 seconds on their fastest laps to take the P1 and P2 spots at 1:34.543 and 1:34.824, respectively. The No. 81 Radical SR3 of Cameron Prince rounded out the Saturday podium in P3 with a quick lap of 1:39.409. Sunday’s results saw a repeat of the P1-P3 spots for all three drivers from Saturday’s finish.
Fielding six entries, the TT6 class saw the top spot on both Saturday and Sunday’s competition go to the No. 9 Mazda Miata of Nishant Patel and No. 60 Miata of Eladio Flores in the P1 and P2 spots, respectively, with P3 going to the No. 60 Mazda Miata of Cristian Romero on Saturday. For Sunday’s competition, we saw an unexpectedly close three-way battle for the P3 spot between the No. 819 Miata of Matt Swords, the No. 41 Miata of Jason Glow, as well as the No. 60 of Romero trying to repeat his performance from Saturday. With a miniscule 0.238 seconds separating all three drivers, the No. 819 of Swords took the P3 spot on Sunday with a lap time of 1:58.305, followed by Glow and Romero respectively at 1:58.398 and 1:58.543.
With three entries, TT2 was close enough that between Saturday’s and Sunday’s results, we saw the rare circumstance where Saturday’s P1-P3 results were reversed during Sunday’s competition. Saturday saw P1 through P3 go to the No. 269 Chevy Camaro of John Taylor (1:41.715), the No. 57 Porsche 911 GT3 of Frank Pinon (1:42.486), and the No. 2 Ford Mustang of rookie driver, Jesse Ammons (1:43.513), respectively. That meant that Sunday’s P1 through P3 finishers were Ammons, Pinon, and Taylor, respectively.
TT4 and TT5 both had head-to-head two-car fields, where TT4 competition saw the No. 8 USLCI Ford Legends car of Brad Miller take the P1 spot both Saturday and Sunday, with the No. 37X Ford Mustang of Jonathan Baker in the P2 spot, with TT5 showing the No. 18 BMW Spec E9X of Roy Parsons take top finishing honors on Saturday, only for the No. 404 Honda CRX of Curtis Bowman to claim the top spot during Sunday’s competition. Lee Brown in the No. 85 Ford Mustang took the P1 honors during both Saturday and Sunday’s competition.
Rounding out the field, the TT1 class on Saturday saw the No. 16 Ford Mustang of Troy Coates take the P1 spot at 1:39.623, with P2 going to the No. 192 BMW M3 of Rob Turczany at 1:48.653, and P3 going to the 1X Chevy Corvette of Fred Evans. With Turczany having to withdraw from Sunday’s competition, that left Coates to maintain P1 from Sunday, with Evans claiming the P2 spot.
In Saturday’s Time Trial Target competition, where the top finishing positions go to the most consistent drivers in any class with the smallest combined time delta between their fastest four laps of the day, the most consistent driver taking the P1 was the 92X TTU BMW M3 of Mario Hernandez, with a combined delta of just 0.702 seconds. P2 was earned by the No. 60 TT6 Mazda Miata of Eladio Flores, with the No. 122 TTU Chevrolet Corvette of Kevin Sprague rounding out Saturday’s TTT podium.
Sunday’s TTT competition found the No. 92X TTU BMW of Mario Hernandez once again at the top of the podium, besting his Saturday results with a mere 0.299 secs combined delta on Sunday. P2 and P3 changed hands on Sunday with the No. 111 of Kade Lewis taking the 2ND spot with a combined delta of 1.021 secs, and the No. 404 TT5 Honda CRX of Curtis Bowman rounding out the podium with a 1.804 secs delta.
