I was invited to attend the 3-hour enduro at the Thunder-Dome in Clovis, California Saturday night. Since getting into 1/32nd scale cars I've met a lot of great local racers and run into guys I've known for 20 years or more from my HO days. Such was the case here as I showed up and "Old Home Week" began.

The Thunder-Dome is located in Clovis, a affluent bedroom community east of Fresno. And like it's owner, Bob Scelzi, the track was very extravagant. The 4-lane Carrerra surface covered 128' in a 6' wide by 28' long area. There was an elevation change of about 2 vertical feet.

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The back straight had a nasty little rise with a left hand kink that caused me problems in practice, but after breaking off the wing and both mirrors of my Synergy TVR it seemed to run better. But I wasn't here to race, I didn't submit my team entry soon enough. Tonight I was just a corner marshall.

The race was run in 23 minute segments, the first two in light, the middle three in darkness, then the rest of the race in light again. The class of the night were Carrera Porsches, Corvettes, Z4's and F575's. Two man teams, with a single car, and driver change at the lane change. Cars were running about 115 laps per segment.

Who won? Brian Rush's BMW Z4 team did with 886 laps raced in the 3 hour race. Next time I will be there with a team....if I can find a relief driver.

Now that is one wild track. Looks like everyone was having a great time.

Cheers!
Tom

This morning I got a call from an old HO team mate who I build several championship cars for "back in the day". They looked at some of the times I was running in practice with my TVR's and with a couple of their DTM cars, and he want's me to help him build cars. ....build cars. Man I just started in 1/32nd, and now I'm "building cars". I have to build myself two Carrera Audi A4's, paint them and have them tuned for the race next month at another track with this sanctioning body. The good news is eventually I'll get an R10 to race too.

I was wondering why you didn't show up down here. That is a nice track, I seem to remember it from about 8 years ago. I see some old racers I know too, I guess it was like old home week. But it sounds like you're not going to do the Artin stockers now, so good luck with the sports car dudes!!!

Let's see....drive 2 hours to race on a 40' 4 lane oval with $25 cars or drive 15 minutes and drive on a 128' 4 lane road course with $40-$50 cars. The decision was pretty easy.