Review of SD Tour Day 2 - from the other seat

Wow, the worst option (for me at least) happened where the course dried up rapidly during our run group. In football, this is equivalent to a game being played on a snowy field and instead of a full 60 minutes of play, you get one hail mary with a ball coated in oil, throwing to a receiver that has one arm tied behind their back to determine the winner.

It was already starting to dry out when it was time for our first run. I knew that with the current conditions, the early runs would not matter as the last run would be the critical run. With that in mind, I went pretty aggressively in the first run to test the limits and I found them. I was rewarded with a bunch of cones on my first run. At least I had a pretty good sense for how much traction would be available.

My second run was about 1 second faster than my first run and the course continued to dry out. It was definitely going to come down to who had the best 3rd run. Jason also put in a solid second run to fall back on if needed. I was a little surprised to see that I was in 1st place at the end of the 2nd run. Kevin McCormick had run a little faster, but had hit cones. With the way both of us were driving, I felt that we had a very definite chance to trophy if not win the event.

By the time we started 3rd runs, the course was quite a bit drier and times were dropping by 1-2 seconds for most people. This last run HAD to be a good one. At the very least, you couldn't afford to hit any cones. I went out for my last run and made a silly mistake early on in my run that resulted in a bunch of cones against me. That eliminated any chance of my doing well. Now it all came down to Jason.

Jason has been running very well in San Diego and was full of confidence. Jason was also the second last driver to go out for the class. Everybody had gathered round to watch the last set of drivers finish their runs. It was a very tense period. Steve Ekstrand lays down the quick time to take over first place. His wife is jumping up and down celebrating. Then Kevin McCormick goes even faster to take first place from Steve. His co-driver starts celebrating. Now it's Jason's turn to finish. He crosses the line and it seems like forever before the display shows his time - the display lights up and he was 3/10ths faster than Kevin. Jason takes over 1st place. Our friends go wild. Now the nail biting starts. There is one more driver who is already on course and just about to finish. All eyes turn to watch the last driver. He crosses the finish line and we wait for the display to light up - Clint does not go any faster. The crowd goes wild and we line up to wait for Jason to come back to the pit.

This was more exciting than me winning the Tour. Absolutely unbelievable! It was great. Our photographer friend Mako made the trip down to take photographs and capture the moment for us. You'll see his great action photos throughout our blog as well.

I'd also like to thank our sponsors:
International Allstars
Lucas Oil
Hyper16Valve
South Coast Performance
JLB Motorsports
Rally Innovations
Sighren Graphics

Thank you to all our friends who have supported us through the year also. This is just the beginning of a wonderful year.