Ed Charnock took the Super Touring 1 Championship after Robert Kahn crashed out of the lead at the 2016 NASA Western States Championships at Buttonwillow Raceway. Despite being disqualified after Friday’s qualifying race, Ed Charnock was able to qualify second on Saturday and take the win on Sunday.
“It’s always interesting with mixed classes,” said Ed Charnock. “I’ve been wanting to take the stock car against the ex-World Challenge Corvette for a while now, and I wish he would have been more patient [passing the Mustang]. It would have been a cool race. We were nose to tail yesterday, and when I saw Robert passing the Mustang, I didn’t think the Mustang saw him, and sure enough there was a big collision. And I just stayed back and waited for them to split.”
While passing lapped traffic Robert Kahn got into a racing incident that ended his race.
“It didn’t go as planned,” Kahn said. “The race was fine up until then. The guy went right instead of left. He was a slow car in another group, and I had the second car behind me, so I was focused.”
Bob Blizzard didn’t quite have the pace to keep up with the leaders, so he often found himself in a race of his own, battling the tough conditions more than other drivers.
“It was an interesting race,” Blizzard said. “With that sand blowing on the track, sometimes you couldn’t even see. I couldn’t see my hood. So you are just going on blind faith.”
The same went for third-place finisher Ronald Swenson, who focused on, “consistency and hitting my marks every lap. Attrition always helps.”
