Part of the fun of Super Unlimited lies in what shows up to race. You never know what’s going to come off the trailers for NASA’s baddest-of-the-bad racing class. The other part lies in seeing just how fast those cars get down the front straightaway.
This year’s Super Unlimited field consisted of a Radical SR, a Superlite RLC coupe, two ungodly Mustangs, a Viper, a Crawford Daytona Prototype, a stock car packing 900 horsepower and a Trans Am Challenger that must have frightened every animal within a 1-mile radius of VIR.
Ray Cocoziello qualified on pole in the Crawford, with Jeff Hinkle in the Challenger from hell in second, and Brian Faessler in his turbocharged Mustang in third.
Green flag waving, Hinkle shot out in into the lead with Dan Raver in the Superlite and Faessler just behind. When the black flags came out due to a collision, the SU field went into the hot pits to let their cars heat soak for a while. When the race resumed, it was slowed just a few laps later for a double yellow.
By that point, Raver had taken the lead, Hinkle had dropped back to fourth, with Faessler in second and Robert Iversen in third in his Radical SR.
Try as Hinkle did to catch the top three, he could not. Adam Romito’s clutch failed on lap seven in his stock car and Cocoziello’s Crawford dropped out after three laps. In the end it was Iversen in first, Raver in second and Faessler in third.
“I was in sixth at the start, but I knew that these heavy cars were going to have a problem keeping the tires under them for 45 minutes and actually the two cautions were not a good break for me,” Iversen said. “I would rather it have gone green. It just kept coming to me and coming to me. I got them one at a time and under the white flag I was able to out-brake the Superlite car into Turn 1 and held him off into Turn 3 and that was all there was.”
Brian Faessler took third place, and although Raver’s second-place finish was nearly a first, he was glad to take the position in the end.
“There was a midrace fake-out yellow. There was a double yellow across the entire course and then it just went off and it went green,” Raver said. “It was a good race. We didn’t expect to be where we are, with a lot of high-horsepower cars. Luckily we had the tires and the aero to keep going through the corners for 45 minutes.”
