Year

Year-End NSXCA dinner and Chin Motorsports track event

Saturday and Sunday Dec.8-9, 2001, Sebring, Florida

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Tom Rasche visits from Minneapolis, here driving the NSX of his brother and CMS board member Brian Rasche..the new black Chin Motorsports trailer is in the background (photo by WSChin)!

What a GREAT finish to a GREAT year for the NSXCA Florida Chapter and Chin Motorsports. We had a complete sellout of the track event with 15 NSXs participating in the event. The festivities started at the Chateau Elan Sebring on Saturday afternoon at 4pm. Tech inspection (now referred to as parking lot social hour) was a BLAST with NSXs gathering from all over Florida and from as far away as Atlanta (2 cars)!. We ran 35 cars through tech in 60 minutes thanks the organization of Rick Cuevas (King of Tech) and Vince Howard (King of Cash). The most interesting cars to show up...a pair of bad ass Vipers owned by a husband and wife team from southern Georgia!

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The Viper Pair (photo by WSChin)

As the sun went down, it started to drizzle then absolutely POURED for the next 3 hours. We all gathered in Salon B for our group dinner. Interestingly the hotel decided to have a buffet in their main dining room for $16.95 when they had charged me $29.95 to feed OUR group down the hall. To ad insult to injury the food was just FAIR. I was pretty upset and complained LOUDLY to hotel management (ever seen a skinny Chinese guy get pissed?). I decided to hand out $10 refunds to everybody at dinner. Management will be hearing out THIS. We filled their hotel (Saturday night was sold out). We should be treated fairly. It kept pouring with thunder and lightning as I went to bed at 1030....to wake up to FOG. Lots of FOG. It was so thick I couldn't see the racetrack from my balcony NEXT to the track. By the time we started the drivers meeting at 8am, it had burned off and the day turned sunny, warm, and gorgeous...what Florida should be in early December.

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Gathering for the drivers meeting at 8am....finally tech and registration at the same trailer! (photo by WSChin)

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(left) Tom Hardy standing yellow (photo by Barry Pike)....(right) yours truly trying to read his drivers meeting notes (photo by Josh Feingold)!

The morning sessions were uneventful except for a 20-minute period of "red mist" when 15 spins occurred around 1130am. I black flagged the session and pulled everyone into the pits to settle things down. Figured it was better than waiting for an accident to bring out the black flag! It seemed to work. We had only 3 spins the rest of the day.

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Manuel Cantoria at his FIRST event with Chin Motorsports! (photo by Josh Feingold)

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Panoz GT racer roars into turn 1 (photo by Jenna Bassett)

During the lunch break we photographed all the NSXs on the front straight and then headed to the Chateau Elan for a hot buffet. Carbotech graciously sponsored the lunch and Larry gave an informative lecture on brakes, answering many questions from the audience.

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Novices stayed at the hotel for their second classroom session. We had a big group of beginners (19), but the instructors were great and there was plenty of track time for all. The afternoon was marred by one serious incident....an instructor went off the track in turn 15 and spun backwards into a wall, almost flipping over. The driver and passenger were unhurt but I believe the car is totalled. The right rear is 4 feet shorter than the left rear. Essentially it's a trapezoid shape. Enjoy the photos below, taken by Jenna Bassett. If you are interested in copies, please contact here at JennaBassett@hotmail.com.

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