The weekend was full of tough competition including Casey Mashore and Jason Frazier. We started out strong and managed to qualify in 3rd place on Friday. Saturday's heat race began with a standing start on the uphill front straight of WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. The green flag dropped and Lucas Weisenberg in the Lucas Racing #46 Spec e46 had a great launch and was side by side with Jared of JDZ Motorsports headed into turn 1. With a concrete wall on his left and Jared on his right. he squeezed through and used every inch of road possible as the field was nearly 3-wide to the braking zone of the Andretti Hairpin. He maintained 2nd position and began chasing Jason Frazier who was in the lead. He caught up to to Jason right as the leaders of the field caught the backmarkers of the split-class 944 specs. With a double yellow being displayed on the front straight, Lucas only had a few corners to make a move. Jason's momentum was killed as he entered the corkscrew 3-wide with 944's. Lucas had the run down the hill and made his move into turn 10, just in time to catch the pace car. As the race restarted, 2nd place Casey Mashore managed to pass Lucas on the straight and maintain the lead. Lucas Racing was happy to be starting on the front row for Sundays rolling start in the Championship race.
Sundays event began with everybody curios: when will it rain. A few weather apps and gut feelings later, the entire field began the race on Toyo RR's... a dry tire. The outlap began to prove that maybe this race will be the rain race. As the green flag dropped, the track had all the grip necessary to maintain a consistent race pace. By turn 4 however, that story quickly changed. Wipers on and head down, Lucas chased Casey up to turn 6. As it was his first time driving in the wet, Lucas was caught by surprise when suddenly the once grippy surface became almost like skating on ice. He got loose on entry and ended up on the outside of the track, 4 wheels off the pavement. Losing serious ground to the leader, Lucas adapted quickly to the conditions and after working his way up to 5th place he managed to end up only a few seconds off of the leaders times. A solid finish to an unpredictable race as the car is in one piece and can hit the track again hard for the next event at Butonwillow Raceway as Lucas fights for the NASA SoCal Spec e46 Championship against Ryan Bittner.
This program would not be possible without the amazing crew and staff of Lucas Racing. We really do have the best team.