At The Track: James Ray and “Trigger” Score Podium Finishes in Utah

Written by James Ray | 02 October 2010

I just returned from a week of racing in Utah where I participated in the NASA National Championship at Miller Motorsports Park, running in two categories: Camaro-Mustang Challenge 2, and American Iron Extreme.

I left last Tuesday, spent a day of practice learning the track on Wednesday, then had Practice, Qualifying, and Qualifying races in both classes on Thursday & Friday. Saturday was the Championship race for CMC2. This is the class I run in the whole season long here in the Southeast. This is the one I went to Utah to try and win. While I fell a little short of winning, I'm happy to report I made the podium. 3rd place. I'm very excited about that!

The American Iron Extreme race was not in my plans. I went out to run CMC2 and Performance Touring (PT). In fact, I practiced and qualified 4th for the big PT race on Sunday. But Saturday night, the America Iron Race Director approached me and a half-dozen others and asked us if we wanted to run in his class. He was trying to get the numbers up in the class. Since I had no allegiance to the PT group, I decided, along with five others, to give it a go! There was really a race within a race. None of us were even in the same zip-code as the Extreme cars. The car that won had more than 3X the horsepower I have! He was doing 180-190 down the front straight while I was probably doing 135ish! But those at the back of the pack had a GREAT race!

I started dead-last, worked my way through the pack after a few laps into 3rd, but over-cooked my tires doing so. It became a drift-fest for me! I got passed by two cars, falling back to 5th and then we had a caution. I had a poor restart and two more cars got by me, but the caution really helped my tires cool down. Now that my grip was back, I quickly got past those who jumped me on the restart and after a couple more laps, made my way up behind the 4th and 5th place cars who were in a heated battle. They were so busy racing each other they didn't notice me sneaking up in their mirrors.

They got side-by-side in a turn, banging on each other and I slipped past on the inside and held them off for another five laps, finishing 3rd! On the podium with the proverbial "knife at a gun fight!" The weekend exceeded my expectations! (and by the way, our good friend Jim Pantas, who hauled my car to Utah, finished 2nd in this race. He has a REAL AIX car!)