A month has passed already. With all the things going on here, it
just flew by. The Viper has been fixed and we are ready for the
5th round of the 2005 Grand Bayou Road Race Series. Although,
Mike Poupart Motorsports
is still only entering one car, Allan
McDonnel's Viper, we would have plenty of help on the team this
time.
My son,
Robbie
Poupart stepped in as crew chief. He
brings a high level
of professionalism along with a confidence in his
abilities that makes me feel comfortable having him take care of the
car. A very good racing friend, Bob Goodwin, was in town.
He would handle the tires and general stuff. Patty is always in
charge of the camera and the trailer and we had a few extra people
hanging around for good measure, including my son, Shane, who was
watching me race for the first time. This allowed me to have much
better focus on what I was supposed to do.
Robbie
Poupart, son & crew
chief,
debriefing
with Mike Poupart, Dad
& driver
Twelve
cars were entered in the three classes combined for our race. Our
class grew this month by one car. We would have three cars competing in
Super Production. Along with John Crosby being back in the GT-3
Porsche, Randy Greff brought his IMSA Porsche 930. It seems like
the Porsches are ganging up on me. The GTO class had also
grown with a few new cars/drivers and the Vintage class only had two
entries. This meant we would have an overall faster field racing
this event.
Patty Poupart
Photo
Practice
went smooth. Again, just settling down and making sure everything was
OK. After qualifying it took a long time for numbers to come back
from timing and scoring. When the sheets arrived, Crosby would be
on the Pole with a 1.15.670. I would be second with a 1.16.213, a
new overall best for me. Greff would be third with a 1.17.744. This
would be a fun day.
As
a side
note worth mentioning, Steve Melton in his GTO Corvette, with an
outstanding overall best for him, qualified fourth with a
1.20.664. While Steve and his team looked over the Corvette after
qualifying they noticed an all but broken rear toe link. They did not
have a spare in the trailer and were probably out for the day. We all
scratched our heads trying to think of where we could get a C4 rear toe
link in a hurry. A racer in the Vintage class, Jimmy Talbot,
offered one off of his street car at home in his driveway about 40
minutes away. His son, Mike, immediately headed for home and
returned with the toe link with about 20 minutes to spare. They
installed it, we
added
a quickie alignment, and
Steven made the race.
Racing has got to be the only competitive sport where your competitors
will help you in any way possible so you can compete.
For the race, I again tried to use the torque of the Viper to take an
early lead and, again, two turns later, I was chasing Crosby's Porsche.
This time I did not watch the Porsche pull away from me every
lap. I was able to pace with Crosby about 3-5 seconds back. I
hoped for traffic to go my way.
With the field being made up of faster cars, the traffic I needed did
not really develop. We both just cleanly moved through the slower cars.
I finished
second again, but only 5.913 seconds back with Greff 18.601 seconds
behind me. Crosby and I both enjoyed a good race and shared a
thumbs up on the cool down lap. This still leaves me in the points
lead for the championship with one race to go. The one thing I
would like different next event is to race Crosby's white Porsche and
not his blue/black Porsche (check out his paint job and you'll
understand).
