October was a good month for the Team WTF?! Spec Racer Ford with three top 10 in class finishes. The month started with the last race of the MARRS series. The first part of the weekend was very wet, which lead to discovering that the Team WTF?! car and driver LIKE the wet. This resulted in a row four (7th) starting grid position. It was interesting to actually be able to SEE the green flag at the start. After a couple of incidents (not involving Team WTF?!) and a close dice throughout the race, Team WT?! claimed its first top 10 finish with 9th overall out of 25 starters.

Near the end of October, Team WTF?! traveled south to VIR for the Goblins Go weekend. For several classes this could have been a three race weekend, including two enduros, one 45 minute enduro, one 30 minute (10 lap) sprint race, and one 1.5 hour race complete with a pit stop for refueling. LOTS of track time. Four sessions of test and tune on Friday, then three 10 minute practice sessions (one for each race) and three 20 minute qualifying sessions and a 1.5 hour enduro all on Saturday.  That was followed by a 10 lap sprint race and the 45 minute enduro on Sunday. All told, it added up to something over 140 full speed laps of the VIR full course or over 450 MILES on the track.
 
The long euduro found Team WTF starting 27th out of a field of 87 cars, including Spec Racer Ford, ITA, ITB, ITC, ITS, Spec Miata, and IT7 cars (SSB and SSC were included but nobody from those classes ran). The way the pit stop rules worked were that every car had to make a 5 minute pit stop. These timed pit stops prevented people not used to hurried pit stops making errors. The Team WTF?! car pit stop went well at about the halfway point of the race. Being on the track with some much slower cars made life interesting and opened up a LOT of passing zones. It was sort of like IMSA racing with prototypes and production cars in the same field. Fastest qualifier was 33 seconds per lap faster than the slowest, with the pole at 2:15 lap time. One exciting moment was entering the uphill esses when a car went off hard into the tire wall to the left. The entry to the esses was obscured with smoke, dust and race car parts. Not wanting to go off the road while trying to turn at speed, Team WTF?! played off road and went straight across the grass, re-entering at the top of the esses. Near the end of the race the clutch overheated and started to slip requiring very slow, careful upshifts. This, plus a slower car going through Hog Pen on the last lap (without knowing it was the last lap), cost a finishing position as Team WTF?! was caught at the line. After the dust settled, Team WTF?! was 15th in class and 20th overall in the provisional results. It  turned out, though, that eight cars cut the fuel loads a little close and ended up being DQd for being under weight, elevating Team WTF?! to 10th in class (out of 31 SRFs) and 15th overall. Not the best way to make the top 10, but rules are rules. 

The sprint race found Team WTF?! in a slightly better starting position at 25th of 80 starters in a field consisting of only SRF, ITS and Spec Miata. The 10 lap race seemed to fly by, finding Team WTF?! in 20th overall at the finish. This would have been a 14th in class (35 cars in class), however since this was a SARRC series race, points were waived to not screw up people still running their series championship. The 45 minute enduro started ONLY 52 cars, with Team WTF?! in 17th at the start. The classes were pretty much the same as the longer enduro. A spin about 1/3rd into the race time, while dicing with an SRF into Turn 1 (same car that caught Team WTF?! at the line in the longer enduro), probably cost two finishing positions. The Team WTF?! car was visibly gaining each lap on the car that had gotten by during the spin and one other car that had been right in front. But the final results saw Team WTF?! in 13th overall, 10th in class (out of 20 SRFs) to give the team its 3rd top ten finish in October.

NC Region runs this type of race weekend twice a year, and you can trust that Team WTF?! will be there for both of them next year. The new schedule shows March 18-19 and Oct 29-29 for the event next year. See you there!