Pocono North Course 5/31/08-6/01/08 - Chris Drabouski

I just got back from my second race weekend of the season. This event was hosted by NASA Northeast and located at Pocono raceway in Pennsylvania. Even though I only live a little under 2 hours from Pocono this was my first time racing on this track. Pocono Speedway is famous for the Tri Oval design that many NASCAR fans would be familiar with. There are quite a few infield configurations offered but this weekend we raced on the North course.

Saturday morning we arrived at the track but were greeted with some rain showers. I had purchased a new set of 17x8 wheels along with some 235-40-17's RA1's for some testing to see what setup would be fastest. With the track still wet we lined up on the grid. As soon as I started my first lap of practice I heard the rear tires rubbing. So I went back to the paddock to see what I could do. I quickly realized that I would need to lose the rear spacer and do some more rear trailing arm modifications if I were to make the 17's work. After some grinding and some alignment changes I went out for qualifying. The car felt good but I still didn't know the track. I ended up qualifying 2nd in class.

We had a mixed field of cars and us H1 drivers were gridded only by time. Scot Burner in his S2000 had qualified 1st in H1 but was starting in 7th overall and I was in 13th overall. The start of the race was a mess, about 5-6 cars all went off in turn 1 with an Evo losing it's front bumper in the middle of the track, luckily I made it though clean. After a few laps Scot Burner got squeezed out of turn 1 and I was able to get past before he got back on track. After about 15 laps they threw a red flag and stopped the race due to the amount of crashed or disabled cars scattered around the course. Crazy. Anyway, I was able to take the win for H1.

Sunday was a much better day. The weather was nice, blue sky's and 70's. Now I was feeling confident with the course and the cars setup. I tried a few more suspension settings and was getting faster. I qualified 1st in H1 with a 59.7 and 9th overall, Scot had a 1:00.0 and was starting in 11th. The race started clean with everyone getting through turn 1 without incident. I had a pretty good lead on Scot but after a few laps I saw him gaining. After catching up to some lap traffic Scot was able to get up to me. We were nose to tail the rest of the race but I managed to keep him behind me and take my 2nd win of the weekend. My fastest lap was a 59.5 during the race.

This proved to be a excellent weekend and a good warm up for Hyperfest at Summit Point Raceway in a few weeks.

-Chris