It was a record setting weekend in NASA NorCal Spec Miata, with 41 participants taking a checkered flag! Tristan Littlehale found his way to pole position, with a blistering lap of 1:54.9 in qualifying for race one. His excitement was short lived when NASA officials inverted the top 10 for race one to begin the season.
As might be expected when a grid is inverted, the drop of the green flag found a lot of cars trying to occupy a small space in turns 1 and 2. To the credit of all, lap one was filled with many position changes but clean racing! Roy Fulmer IV found his way to the lead at the end of lap one followed by a pack of four cars: Aaron Braverman, Graham Downey, Justin Casey and Littlehale. Fulmer fended off a few challenges as the group behind him mixed it up all race long. At the checkered flag, it was Fulmer taking race one, followed by Casey, Downey, Littlehale and Braverman.
For race two on Sunday, the grid was based on finishing position of race one. Fulmer and Casey pulled the field to the green flag and another clean start for 40 cars! At the end of lap one, Littlehale found himself in P1 followed by the same pack of Casey, Downey, Fulmer and Braverman. From P3, Downey found his way past Casey on lap four and spent the next four laps hunting down Littlehale. On lap nine, Downey found his way past Littlehale and went on to victory. Littlehale, Casey, Fulmer and Braverman rounded out the top five.
For race three on Sunday, grid was based again on the previous race finish, so Downey and Littlehale started on the front row. Downey took the lead by Turn 3 and never looked back. He stretched his lead to more than 3 seconds as Littlehale and Fulmer raced to the line .1 seconds apart to round out the podium. Casey and Team Ecobrap’s Matt Cresci finished in the Toyo Bucks at fourth and fifth. Cresci started dead last in Saturday’s race and drove to P11. He drove to P6 in the first race on Sunday and finished P5 in the third race Sunday.
