Everyone Loves a Winner. This past weekend (December 3rd-4th, 2011) the IPG Racing crew traveled down to West Palm Beach, Florida for the 2011 Season Finale of the National Sports Car Racing Association (NSCRA). The organizers of the NSCRA recently changed the class format which means that for this event both IPG Race Cars in attendance would be running in the Quick 32 Bracket Class. This event also marked the re-debut of the IPGParts.com True Street Civic after a several year hiatus. First round qualifying got off bright and early as James Innes piloted the All Motor Civic to a 10.36 @ 131 MPH pass to start things off. The True Street Civic took a nice smooth pass down the track as driver John Ferguson got reacquainted with the car. 2nd round qualifying continued the consistency for Innes with a 10.35 @ 131 MPH pass and Ferguson had some shifting issues but still managed to complete his run.
Going into the elimination rounds Ferguson knew he had some work to do to get the win lights and he did just that against his first opponent pulling a .021 reaction time to Hole Shot win against his opponent who ran perfect on his dial in. Ferguson also ran the best pass for the car for the weekend a 10.15 @ 145 mph thanks to the Motec tweaking by Darin @ Double D Tuning. Innes had a bye run and went after it to see if another 10.3x pass was possible but as he went to shift into 2nd gear nothing was there. The car coasted down the track and returned to the pits for evaluation. 2nd round eliminations were next and the All Motor Civic decided to not have 2nd gear anymore. The goal was do to some creative shifting, slow down the dial in time and hopefully pull out the win light. Shifting 1st to 3rd is interesting to try for the first time during an elimination round and Innes couldn't get the gears to engage going down the track but still just got edged out at the finish line by a little over a tenth of a second. Valiant effort but the All Motor Civic was out. Ferguson had the luck of the draw this time with a bye run to advance to the Quarterfinal round. Another solid pass in the Quarterfinal round moved Ferguson into the Semifinals where again consistency and showing up pays off with another by run into the Finals. The final round match up was for sure going to be the toughest of the day against Hector Juan who has been one of the most consistent and toughest to beat racers in 2011. Every part of the run was going to be crucial but as the lights came down Juan left too early turning on the red light automatically giving Ferguson the Win !!!! It is unbelievable to bring this car back out after however many years and pull out a win the first time out. Just goes to show you the most important thing about racing is to be at the event. You have to be there to even have a shot and anything can happen.
As always we couldn't do any of this without our support system and of course our customers. Special thanks to John Ferguson, Louis Murphy, Darin @ Double D Tuning, Marc Podkowik, the NSCRA and everyone else involved with what we do. This was a great way to cap off the 2011 Racing Season and as the team has a bit of downtime for the next month they are already preparing for the 2012 Race Season. See everyone soon !!!
