The NASA Great Lakes traveling road show made its annual August stop at Mid-Ohio, and the competition didn’t disappoint. Three races on the pro course produced three different winners, rookie racers showed good pace with poise under pressure, and in a pleasant surprise, the normally unpredictable weather yielded mostly sunny skies all weekend.
Twelve racers hit the track for Saturday morning warmup. The top five Spec Miatas were within 1.5 seconds for best time, with Chris Finnigan leading the way with a 1:43.85, Wyatt Wood in second at 1:44.05, and John Allen at 1:44.38.
Qualifying followed two hours later, and veteran tire whisperer Allen again found his way to the top with a 1:43.5. Wood remained P2, matching his warmup time and TMC challenger Lincoln Olson, who’s shown an improvement in pace all season, captured P3 with a 1:44.7.
Race one at 4:15 Saturday afternoon took the green flag from the back straight and after going through the Esses and Thunder Valley, TMC driver Olson passed Wood for P2 which he held for two laps. Finnigan, who started from P4, passed Wood and Olson during lap three for P2, and started working on Allen who hadn’t pulled away yet. On lap six, Finnigan, with Wood on his back bumper, dropped Allen to P3 where the top contenders remained for the balance of race one.
The top three cars in class were separated by less than a second until lap 8 when Finnigan and Wood started to gap Allen. The next two cars in line were Olson and Ryan Waldo with their own battle, with Olson out front by a half second.
Race two late Sunday morning gridded by fast lap times from race one. Wood sat P1 with a 1:44.1, with Allen and Finnigan next in line each with 1:44.3’s. Those drivers were separated by roughly .5 seconds total for most of the race, with Wood ultimately coming out on top. Further back in the pack, rookie Michael Spivey, starting P6, was having a good race until race craft came into play with out-of-class traffic, something we’ve all had to learn. Steve Escoffier and Mark DeBruler had their own fun as well, exchanging positions three times during the nine-lap race.
For the weekend finale, Allen and Finnigan led the field to green, but this time left no opportunity for Wood to challenge by immediately building a lead that at the checkers was 15 seconds out front of P3 despite a close battle between the two. Wood was not without his own race, however. Olson found another half second of lap time after a setup change after race two. The two exchanged positions twice during the race, with no margin for error during the 11 lap event. Chris Schuster capitalized on a great start after starting P10 and finished P7, turning his fasted laps of the weekend in the finale after suffering mechanicals race one and race two.
Exciting recap!