Photo by James Ray
FV Anniversary, Paddock Crawl, 200+ entries…. everything at NERRC #2
If you were not at Lime Rock Park this last weekend – you missed out. It was a jam-packed NER Club Racing weekend. To start, there were over 200 entries, so plenty of wheel-to-wheel action all day Friday and Saturday across each of the classes and race groups.
Then Friday night brought the annual Paddock Crawl. So. Many. Good. Eats.
Lastly, the Formula Vee drivers celebrated their 60th Anniversary, with legendary Sam Posey joining in the fun.
Race Recaps
As Kathy Barnes, stated, “We used All.The.Flags.” over the course of the weekend. “Great teamwork with all our specialties reminded me how good the NER team is. With a hard stop at 6pm and big bore race last – we used every bit of that skill and worked hard with the LRP team to make sure drivers got to finish their race despite clean up.”
As a reminder, “There are so many little details that are often not seen by many participants – registrars working with safety stewards, grid working with pits during a black flag all, solving radio problems without missing a lap, starters calculating scenarios for meeting that 6pm deadline. Trophy celebrations in impound and the Paddock Crawl with MoHud SCCA for carrying on the Bucci legacy.” If you haven’t thanked a worker or NER volunteer recently, do so now. They make all the fun possible.
Three track records fell over the weekend. Congratulations to Jonathan Weizman, Scott Smith and Nick Leverone on their new fast times.
By the Group
Group 1 was the FVs, which were joined by Sam Posey for the 60th Anniversary celebration. 22 V’s took to the turns to race it out with Gerard Owen Callaghan taking both the Qualifying Sprint and Race 2 wins for the weekend. Michael Hinkle pushed Gerard back to 2nd during Race 1 on Saturday morning.
Group 2 was the largest of the weekend. 42 cars took to the short LRP course, with B-Spec and ITs joining all the Miatas in the fun. Nick Leverone, David Gran, Michael Buccella and Steve Introne each took triple wins in STL, ITA, IT7 and B-Spec respectively.
Group 3 wings-and-things saw a lot of attrition. With 6 of the original 14 DNFing. William Crowley led the pack all day Saturday in his P1.
Group 4 was another very large field, with 39 entries in SM/SSM/SMT. Marcello Paniccia and Rafe Abdulali split the three race wins. Marcello squeaked by Ethan Goulart on the Saturday afternoon race beating him to the checker by only 0.056 seconds.
Group 5 fielded 36 cars in production/touring classes. In the new, growing SE30 class, there were 7 entries competing, with a different driver claiming the win each race. Thomas McGinn, Scott Smith, and David McGrath each took a checker. For those interested in this developing, and quickly expanding class, be sure to check out James Ray’s interview with these drivers.
Group 6 was our SRFs. “Mr LimeRock” – Lee McNeish was on site to take both Saturday race wins in SRF3. Father-son team Tristan and Aiden Welling went 1-2 all weekend in SRF. Dad took 2 of the races, and son took one.
Group 7 was the last one on the roster, the big bore cars. A few opted not to run on Friday, joining the rest of the ground pounders for Saturday’s races. While there were a few that couldn’t make it to the end and retired early, with so many classes in this group, no one finished lower than 3rd!
Adding Drivers
Finally – there were 14 drivers on Novice permits working towards their full competition licenses. Eight of them passed! Six need one more race weekend. This included Salvatore Baisley – a Track Night coach, SCCA Time Trials Nationals driver and MoHud region flagger, who had his Novice permit signed off and is now cleared to road race.
FV drivers and Sam Posey celebrate their 60th Anniversary
Paddock Crawl In Pictures
Official Results
Official results from all Qualifying and Race events from this weekend are now available. Select your race group, then view or download the final Timing and Scoring results as PDF files.
New Track Records
GTX – #62 Jonathan Weizman – 0:57.295
SE30 – #186 Scott Smith – 1:03.567
STL – #137 Nick Leverone 0:59.198
