Sept. 7, Atlanta, GA

The BILDON Motorsport GTI was entered in the Pro IT this weekend, leaving the SARRC races to those battling for the Championship. Chris Albin (pictured) brought his ARRC winning GTI over from St. Louis so this race would prove to be a good gauge to measure the teams readiness for the championship in November. We qualified 4th behind The GTI's of Albin and Alan Russell. The Bildon crew timed us at 1:51 for qualifying on a number of laps which would have put us on the front row, however T&S thought otherwise and we started the race with about 10 cars between us and ITB pole sitter Albin.

Bill made a relatively good start even after being held up by a Nissan 240sx going into turn 1. The first few laps were full of flying dirt and grass as the field sorted itself out. The Bildon GTI found itself in a battle with the GTI of Alan Russell behind and an ITA RX7 in front who was determined to not let us pass. Eventually Bill made a banzai pass through the grass in the bottom of the esses taking the RX7 by suprise and forcing the inevitable pass, more sooner than later. Bill needed to move to the front quickly if he had any chance at catching Albin. With Alan pressuring from behind we were unable to concentrate completely on catching the leaders. Third place was swapped a few times until finally the Bildon GTI was able use a bit of lapped traffic to advantage and get enough of a lead over Russell to begin running faster laps in pursuit of 2nd place. With about 15 laps of the scheduled 20 remaining we caught the ever present Plymouth Fire Arrow of Atlanta driver Doug Smith. A little pressure resulted in his handing over 2nd place by means of a nice 360 spin. We continued to gain on the leader until the race was effectively ended by a full course yellow which lasted the last few laps.