Michael Kanisczak was a man on fire all weekend in Spec E46. He won qualifying on Friday and the qualifying race on Saturday. That sealed pole position for the championship race on Sunday. Kanisczak used pole position to establish and keep a lead he would hold till the end, netting him his second national championship. He earned his first one in Honda Challenge at Watkins Glen in 2016.
“I knew it was going to be tough,” Kanisczak said. “My goal was to set the best qualifying time, win the qualifying race, and I knew I had a huge target on my back for the final race. I had serious guys right behind me, so my goal was to build the biggest gap I could before I hit the Spec E30 traffic.”
2017 Spec E46 champion Broderick Bauguess started from second just outside Kanisczak, and as Kanisczak flashed his headlights to get through Spec E30 and 944 Spec traffic, Bauguess began to put a bit of a gap on Team Razors Edge MV in third and Ali Salih in fourth. Bauguess was able to hold on and keep second till the end despite a car that wasn’t handling as he might have liked.
“I think we missed our tire pressure setup a little bit, because I was real loose,” Bauguess said afterward. “I didn’t have a lot of control, but my game plan was to try to use E30s and 944s to pick and hold them back while I chased him down, but ran out of time at the end of it so. …”
Driven by NASA NorCal’s Shawn Webster, Team Razors Edge MV, started from fifth and methodically worked toward the front through mixed-class racing and wound up third.
“I was very excited with the results. I mean, the key with a 45-minute race was just to stay consistent and really get through lapped traffic as fast as possible without losing so much lap time, and I think I was able to do that yesterday,” Webster said. “Today I kind of got a feel for it and you really just have to stick your nose in there and hope for the best.”
