Round 1 at Maple

It was an elated Volcano Motorsports team that headed down to victory circle at Maple on Saturday afternoon after a thrilling victory by Samuel Highcliff with a last lap pass on his teammate Josep Lettenberg while also holding off Destiny Racing's Rocco Salzani in a three way battle through the final corners. "Man, what a great race," said Highcliff in victory lane. "This Venom STR was fast all day, took the pole with it, and now the win. That was quite a battle to get here, but we came through. Tell you what, it feels good to be here right now, I feel like I really earned it." Highcliff and teammate Lettenberg were battling most of the race, but on the last lap Rocco Salzani managed to sqeeze through to second by following Highcliff when he made the pass. "I wasn't sure that it was going to work, but I tried it anyway, and ended up second instead of third. So I guess that paid off for me," said Salzani. "Wow, what a race. If this is any indication of how the rest of the season is going to go, the fans are in for some good stuff." Josep Lettenberg seemed a little disappointed in his third place finish. "I mean, I had the lead going into the final lap. I knew it was going to be close, but I didn't expect to get nudged into third. I'm not mad or anything, it was just good, hard racing. But I definitely could have driven those last few turns a little better."
Meanwhile, with all the celebration taking place, there were several teams that had their struggles in the first race of the series. Both of the planetgenerally.de cars failed to advance from the heats. Team engineer Mark Welsh took part of the blame. "We just weren't quite as ready as we could or should have been, and that's on me. We did some testing at our shop, and went out to a track to test, but I guess we could have done more work to make these cars better. We'll be back next week, though." Another team that seemed to have first day jitters was Herbal Productions. "It really sucks, you know?" said Gote Garde after finishing last in his heat. "We had great expectations today, and unfortunately they didn't get lived up to. We really need to work hard to be ready for Dropez next week." Another letdown, although a little more successful, was Peninsula Motorsport's Niko Tomas. Tomas started the day on a high note, qualifying 4th after being at the top of the speed charts for a while with his time. He then finished second in his heat, then dead last in the B-Main, ending his day. "I just don't know what happened. We started off great, I hit it almost perfect in qualifying, then I get to the races and everything just kind of started to come unglued. It's not the car, the car ran fine. I just screwed up big, and I'm sorry for my fans, my team, and Chekit Credit Cards. I'll look forward to doing better for them next week."
The privateers seemed to fair alright, but not as well as the big teams, which comes as no surprise. Dale Aceman was fairly happy with his run. "Hey, I ended up third in my heat, and was able to make it to the B-Main from a very competitive last chance dash. I'm pretty happy, we learned some things and will come back stronger next week." On the down side of things was Jamie Rourke. "I really needed a good run today. Getting to one of the mains would have been awesome. But it just wasn't in the cards. I qualified slow, and raced even slower. Well, we'll do some work on the car this coming week and try to come back stronger next week."
Next week's race is a street course, Dropez. The Loco Hot Sauce Street Race of Dropez will go green on June 16th. The podium may look a little different this week, as the track is totally different than Maple. It is a very wide open track with long straights where cars can pick up a lot of speed. We will see who will come out on top in the second round of the NAGRCA GT Series.