Press releases for RP Performance, SCCA and NASA

The Washington DC region’s SCCA 2010 drivers school is quickly approaching. This year the spring school is a double event allowing you to obtain your race license in a single weekend (March 19th).

Do not under-estimate how busy you will be throughout the weekend! We can offer you full crew support along with lunch and drinks, all you need is your own car and gas. We can also put you in one of our rental Miatas so you have even less to worry about.

You may think about crewing for yourself, but it is not worth the risk… Missing just a single track session might cause you to fail your license as there is a miniminal amount of track time that is required. This year’s double event reduces the extra track time even further allowing for a tiny margin of error.

You have enough to worry about during your school, let us take care of your car and make sure you get all of your track time. Call us at (304) 728-6794 or send us an email rpperformance1@aol.com to get your race career started!

After a dominating season, RP Performance and partners Performance Auto Works have locked up 4 championships in the Mid-Atlantic Road Racing Series for 2009. We conquered in SM, SSM, ITA and SRX7, bringing RP’s total up to 26 championships in 15 years of competition.

The Zalner brothers, Ken and Brian, finished in 1st and 2nd place respectively in SM giving Ken his 9th championship in 10 years. Scott Brunk claimed the championship in SSM and captured a new track record at Summit Point Raceway this weekend at the season finale with a blistering time of 1:28.052.

Phenom sophomore season driver Brian Price won the ITA championship in his SM Miata and capped off his season with a pair of wins on the weekend. As if the ITA championship was not enough, Brian also managed to bring it home in 4th place in the SM standings as well.

SRX-7 had a hotly contested battle between RP drivers “F1″ Al Gervais and Dave Ade. In the end, it was Dave Ade emerging victoriously as SRX-7’s newest champion. Al brought it home in 2nd place and rookie sensation Kevin Hutchens rounded out the top 3 for a total RP Performance podium sweep in the highly competitive SRX-7 class.

RP Performance would like to send out a special thank you to all of its drivers and fans for the continued support that our race team has received and continues to receive on an ongoing basis throughout the years.

Thank You!!!

RP Performance clinched SCCA MARRS Championships in 4 different classes this past weekend. Ken Zalner in SM, Scott Brunk in SSM and Brian Price in ITA. In SRX7, both Al Gervias and Dave Ade have a chance of being champions going into the last race, with only 50 points separating them. Congrats to all of our customers for a great season. More detailed news to follow later this week…

Weather was intense to say the least, buckets of water pored from the sky turning the dusty grassless infield to a pool of mud. Just look at below for the calm before the storm (Click image for a super-sized version...)

The weather forced set-up strategy with the Zalner's going from a dry set-up to wet set-up and back and forth a bunch of times before deciding on a wet set-up for Saturday's race. This decision yielded Brian and Ken with 6th and 8th place finishes respectively.

Sunday after an intense battle throughout the race, while leading on the last lap with 3 turns to go, a competitor got into me and spun us both... I managed to get it going again and salvage a 3rd place finish. With all of the changes in set-up throughout the weekend, Ken fought handling problems on Sunday but managed to bring it home in 8th...

The RP team is looking forward to an exciting double header weekend for Labor Day, back at the home track.

For those of you looking for a copy of the results for the Thunderbolt weekend, I tracked them down on the NeSCCA website are they are available here (PDF link). Here is also a link to the results from the previous race at Lightning.

MARRS8 brings us back up to the brand new NJMP, this time at their primary track. Unlike Lightning, Thunderbolt has full facilities and was designed as a professional caliber course. The RP team will be heading up Thursday afternoon to claim our spot in the paddock. If you need directions, they are available on the NJMP website. Make sure to check them before you leave since the track’s address is not yet in most GPS or online map systems. You can use this link to open google maps to the address that is best for directions.

The track map is available on the NJMP website as well. The 2.25 mile track has 14 turns and a 1/2 mile straightway. A version of the track map with the turn by turn description formatted for printing is available from RP at this link.

If you want to read a turn-by-turn description of the track you can visit this site for a non-racer’s perspective on it or read a more detailed discussion at the same site. Lastly, watch some videos at a high quality video site like vimeo to get ready for your race. See you all there!

Team RP demonstrated skill of quickly learning new tracks by earning 4 wins and 3 poles in SM and SSM.  A full race report will follow shortly, but here is some NJMP and Lightning information to keep you occupied in the mean time.

The facilities overall were nice (especially because they were new) but there are a few key things lacking from the Lightning side of NJMP.  First off, there is no WiFi at Lightning which is why this information wasn’t coming to you real-time from the track.  The showers (all 3 of them) were located at the other track (Thunderbolt) which was a long drive away, that’s right… no way to even walk, you had to drive or find a ride.  There were very few places to actually watch the race due to the kart track(s) taking up much of the infield.  Since only golf karts (no ATVs, etc) were allowed outside of the paddock, this made finding a place to watch even more difficult.  Lastly, the long road from the gate was narrow and hard to navigate while hauling a long trailer, something that should have been considered when building a race track!?

Now, onto the track.  The turns are not yet named and even the numbers provided don’t seem to make any sense so I will narrate from the start finish and you can follow along with the track map.  This track is FAST but has plenty of run off room, although you launch a huge cloud of dust into the air every time it happens (and it happens a lot).  Turn 1 is faster than it looks, the exit is blind but there is a little more room than you first realize.  Turns 2 and 3 are a complex sequence that should be negotiated as a double apex to set you up for the left hand at turn 4.  Turn 5 crests over the hill, causing your car to get a little light, making for some exciting racing.  Now you go under the bridge and brake hard for the other left hand turn, Turn 6, which leads you onto the only named turn on the track: the Lightbulb, and then back onto the straight.

Come back later this week to read the full race reports for SM, SSM and SRX7 and see some videos posted from the event.

Team RP is heading up to NJMP to claim our spot in the paddock and get ready for the test of the team. Make sure you look at this page: http://njmp.com/directions.html for directions since the track address isn’t on ANY of the map websites and probably isn’t in your GPS either. Use this address instead:

8000 Dividing Creek Road
Millville, NJ 08332

Here is a direct link to the track map as a PDF which is kind of hard to print or you can download it converted to a JPG for easier viewing and printing.

Assuming that I can get WiFi at the track, we will be live blogging the race all weekend, hope to see you all there!

With the launch of our new website, we will be posting news and information about SCCA and NASA race events throughout the season. Make sure to come back and visit our site often to read the latest news.