2006 R1, Inf

For many years, the San Francisco Region's season opener was in mid March. And for many of those years it was a rain race. A few years ago, the first race of the season was moved to late March or early April. This worked well for a quite a few years until 2006. The rain at this event was actually intermittent and there were periods of sunshine. But when it did rain, was as hard as it had been at some mid-March events. Because of these conditions, along with the lack of rain tires, I elected not run in "wet sessions".

The following two pictures are from the pre-grid for Group 7, which is exclusively for Mazda Miatas. This was first group out Sunday morning. In order to get a good clear track for their qualifying run, cars try to grid as early as possible to be first one on track. On this day, one of the Miata entrants went to pre-grid before 6:00 AM, only to find a car which had apparently gridded the previous evening. When I pulled into the paddock, there were only a few cars on grid, and most were in the process of mounting rain tires.


The North Paddock early Sunday Morning. My Royale is just below center under the blue tarp. The awning was minimal in keeping equipment dry.	Rich McClosky found a high spot in the paddock around which the water flowed. At most events this utiliy cover is avoided because of the "un-level" surface.

The RM Pacific Motorsports Crossle 45, N35.	In prepartion for qualifying Jack Richardson enters the RM Crossle 45 as Ron Chisholm looks on.

Because of the rain, most Group 4 entrants elected to wait for the start of the session under awnings, were its relatively dry, rather than proceed to the pre-grid.	Jack Richardson waits for qualifying to begin. At this point the course marshalls postponed practice until the rain let up.

Eventually the conditions were sufficient to allow cars oqualifyinge and they proceed to pre-grid. Here Jim Turley waits the start of practice in his Tiga FFA-79, N55.	Dave Jalen in his Swift DB1, N50 made it to the grid later than usual. Note that not every driver had crew to hold an umberella.


The weather was questionable right up to race time. Here the cars from Porter Racing undergo a last minute switch to rain tires, Note that the pavement is damp.	Within a few minutes after the previous photo was taken, the paddock surface was wet and everyone was looking forward to a rain race.

The cars take to the course, just as the rain starts to increase.	The cars of Group 4 line up in the pit lane before going on course. The pace car separates the Formula Fords from the Formula Vee's. This will be a split start which in theory will keep the groups separated for most of the session.

These two pictures were made on two consecutive laps. They show the black flag being shown for the leader, car 10, at the Start/Finish line. Several attempts to start the race, had to be scrubbed because car 10 kept jumping the green flag.	After several false starts, the race finally began, but the marshalls showed the black flag to car 10, ordering it into the pits. The crew chief for car 10, in radio contact with the driver, directed him to ignore the black flag and to stay out on course. Car 10 ran the entire race ignoring the black flag.

Action in the pit lane! Actually this is about as exciting as it can get in the pits during a 25-minute race. The group on the far right are SCCA officials dicussing the situation with car 10. The second group from the right is crew for car 10.