Niki wins 2nd Formula Continental Triple Crown in a row!

For the second year in a row, Niki won the Formula Continental Triple Crown. It was another fun and successful weekend for the Coello Racing team at this years SCCA Runoffs held for the first time at Heartland Park in Topeka Kansas. This was my first Runoffs experience as a driver and I learned quickly how long of an event this is. We

got to the track over a week before my race to do two test days and to secure our paddock spot. Testing went well for both Nick and I although it was very difficult to judge our speed. The big issue with the test days was the weather. For some reason even though it was October, we were greeted by almost 100 degree temperatures and high winds drastically slowing the lap times vs our outings earlier in the year. Not ideal conditions, but we were able to test the couple of items we wanted to test and make sure the cars were in top notch form for the races.

There would be four qualifying sessions for this years Runoffs with the first starting on Monday. When we returned to Topeka for qualifying, temperatures had drastically dropped from near 100 degrees to the low 50's. It was still extremely windy, but just to add to the challenge the wind shifted 180 degrees blowing at our backs down the front straight instead of at us. For Niki the first qualifying session was not perfect but he quickly found out that he really had no real challengers to his number one spot in the class. Niki put his #81 Pouredfoundations.com 2001 VanDiemen on pole and while he would improve on his time during the week, it was not necessary and he ended up about 1 second faster than Cole Morgan and Justin Pritchard (shown next to Nick above). I had a little tougher time of things, as the very large and competitive Spec Miata field made qualifying an exciting challenge. With 60 cars on track and so many cars and drivers very well prepared for this event, 2 or 3 tenths of a second would be the difference between pole position and 20th place. I had more trouble than anticipated finding a clear lap and never got 100% out of my car in any of the four sessions. Actually I ended up with three sessions, since we had rain effectively washing out one of our qualifying sessions. I would end up qualifying in 6th position just a couple tenths off of the pole time of Blake Clements. The car was capable of pole which was evident in the one lap that would have been my pole time except for being purposely blocked and run off the track on the back section of my last flying lap. It was very evident from the beginning of the week, that everyone in SM was taking this race extremely seriously and so nothing was going to come easy all week.

Niki's race was up first on his birthday and with Niki starting on pole the only question would be if he could get through turn 1 and the first lap or two with out getting hit before the tire temps finally came up. Well, everything almost went smoothly except for a small nudge or two from Cole Morgan on the start of the second lap which caused some cosmetic damage to Nick's diffuser. More importantly it hurt Morgan's car more, tearing off the right front wing end plate and top element. Morgan after the first couple of laps (Soft Good Year tires vs Nick's std Avons) was not going to be able to challenge Nick any way, but with the damage to the front wing was losing ground to Nick in a hurry. The only other car that was fairly competitive was the Piper of Justin Pritchard. Justin may have been some real competition the week of the Runoffs but a couple issues really hurt Justin's week. First some issues with the drive train put them behind schedule in testing and then tire issues with their Hoosier tires left them searching for a used set of Avon tires to throw on the car the day of the race. Even with a full course yellow, Niki got a great restart and pulled away from the field for an easy victory and his second SCCA Formula Continental Triple Crown in a row. Cole Morgan in a Swift DB-6 finished 2nd and Justin Pritchard in his Piper finished 3rd.

As for my race, things did not go as well as I had hoped, unfortunately the weather continued to mess things up with overnight rain Saturday night and very cold temperatures left the track damp for the start of our race. In what turned out to be a crap shoot, some of the field picked dry tires and some of the field picked wets. With the weather forecast calling for rain all day and the radar showing rain on the way I choose to go with wet tires (full treaded tires). Looking like the race would be run in the wet with the weather radar showing rain, I ran the morning warm up to get in a few laps of rain practice. Things went very well in the rain as usual, with myself and Andrew Caddell substantially faster then the rest of the field. Unfortunately, with 60+ cars on the track and the rain not arriving for about an hour or two later than expected, my tire choice was definitely the wrong way to go. Starting from sixth place I worked my way into 3rd on the start and quickly ran down leaders Caddell and Rivera setting the fast lap of the race to that point on lap five. Unfortunately the track started to dry very quickly with 60+sets of warm tires circulating and I slowly fell back throughout the rest of the race. I pushed the car as hard as I could the whole race, and held on to finish 13th. Considering how things have gone the last two years for me and how good my car was setup for this race, 13th is definitely a disappointment but it is the Runoffs after all.

I'll be back at it again in 2007, but with a Formula Ford and hopefully the Runoffs will be a little more successful for me. Nick said he'll be back as well attempting to win a third Triple Crown in a row. Not exactly sure on the record books for this one, but I have not heard of anyone winning three Triple Crowns in a row, much less three Runoffs wins in a row.

Oh, and for those of you that maybe missed the Runoffs on SPEED channel this winter or would like to watch Niki win or watch me in my mysery :-) , check out the DVD set with all of the 2006 Runoffs races on it and yes that is Nick on the cover of the DVD set. Click on the picture and it will take you to a link to purchase the DVD set.