Monterey, CA - The SCCA National Championship Runoffs will be held at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in October this year. This is the first time the Runoffs will be held on the West Coast since 1968. With that in mind, the decision was made to go up and get some track time in preparation for the Runoffs at the San Francisco Region’s double regional event at the end of March.
Since this racetrack sits on public park land, there are strict sound control limits. The Team LMR Formula Mazda is already equipped with a muffler and curved tail pipe to reduce the engine noise. Unfortunately, during the first practice held on Friday, Mason was shown the black flag and had to return to the garage area with a sound control violation. Fortunately, one of his competitors had a secondary muffler that could help reduce the sound further. With that in place, Mason went out for qualifying. However, after two laps, Mason was shown the black flag again for yet another sound violation, this one louder than the one in the morning! How do you get louder when adding a muffler? It was a very strange scenario as this is a spec car with a sealed engine, spec muffler and exhaust. Mason was running an identical set-up as his competitors. Mason and crew chief Tom Engelsman went to work again and started removing plates from the newly added SuperTrapp muffler. After a hardship lap, the car came back louder again. More plates removed and same result. Finally another competitor loaned Mason an exhaust shroud. Another hardship lap and still no luck. With one more modification, the car came back legal on sound but just under the limit.
Because of that issue, Mason started next to last in the race on Saturday. One-by-one, he started making passes and was in the top ten in class by the end of lap one. As the race wore on, Mason continued to carve his way through the field and by the time the checkered flag flew, he was up to fifth. A great finish considering all of the challenges leading up to it.
Saturday afternoon was a qualifying session for Sunday’s race and Mason ended up qualifying sixth after having to abort his quickest lap due to a yellow flag situation. Sunday’s race proved extra challenging as the rain that had hit overnight left a river of water crossing the track at the apex of Turn 3. “On the warm-up lap I thought that with this many cars it’s going to be a disaster going through here. Amazingly, after the drop of the green flag, everyone made it through unscathed. It was incredibly slippery and visibility was poor due to the spray off the tires of the cars in front, but we slid our way through that mess all race long,” explained Mason. He was able to make a couple of passes to move into fourth place and could see that he was closing on third and a podium finish, but alas, there was a battle between two prototype cars in front of him that made it nearly impossible to get by. “I’d close up in the infield and fall away on the straights due to the lack of horsepower compared to the other cars.” Finally, one of those cars spun right in front of me, but by that time third place was out of reach,” said Mason.
Two top five finishes were a great result considering where the team started the weekend and valuable lessons were learned in preparation for October. “I’m glad we experienced these issues now instead of in October” said a relieved Mason.
Racing at this level would be impossible without the support provided by all the Team LMR sponsors, especially Crew Chief Tom Englesman of Auto Diagnostic Services. Polar Heart Rate monitors provide Mason with the ability to record heart rate data that he can later analyze. That knowledge helps him prepare physically for his next race.
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| Larry activates his Polar RC3 GPS heart rate monitor on the grid. His heart rate peaked at 164 bpm during the race! | |
 Photo by Stella Castro |
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