2023 Hallett race recap

I all, I know the forum has been a little quiet lately but I wanted to spark a little energy with a quick recap of the Hallett event that had 14 CMC cars in attendance!!

It was an amazing weekend with temperatures uncharacteristically cool with rain threatening all weekend and the highs only in the mid-80's. People were even wearing pull-overs Friday night which I don't think has ever happened at Hallett in June.
I had a great start in R1 but got held up by an AI car going through T1 which allowed Sam to get a clean pass well before going into the bus stop. After 4 or 5 laps of trying to keep Josh behind me, I was able to get side-by-side with Sam going into the bitch and was able to hold the pass for the win.
R2 I had a good jump being on the outside row but unfortunately the track decided to backfill the edge of the track with gravel so when McFall put his right side tires off on the front straight, it kicked up rocks which knocked at least 1 (maybe more) hole in my radiator. I noticed after about 6 laps the temp was a little hot compared to what it should have been (185 in R1 and was up to 210 currently). I tried short-shifting to try to not loose too much speed and felt I was doing a pretty good job managing the temps from 210-225 and back down to 210. The car started losing a little power and finally with 1 lap to go it started running pretty bad so I killed the engine and pulled off track.
I will be definitely be getting some much heavier mesh for the front bumper and will hopefully start tearing into the motor in a week or so to see the extent of the damage.

A huge thanks to all the AMCM crew for their amazing hospitality as always!! The Slip & Flip was a blast Saturday evening and the comradery in the pits is always the best.

Also a big thanks to Steve and Ryan for the cooking Friday night as well as everyone else that brought delicious sides and dessert. The dinner had everything with burgers, brisket from Ross, mac+cheese, queso, beans, salsa, tons of chips+dips, and the variety of generic cookies.
I also want to give a big shout-out to Jeremy Gunter and Ross Smith for bringing a smoker for both Friday night food as well as the ever famous Saturday night Midnight Ribs!!! The food is always a highlight of the Hallett weekend and this year was amazing as always!!

Thank you to everyone that attended as we had an incredible mixture of old school veterans along with our newer CMC rookies.
Jonathan Valdez earned his Competition license on Friday and had his first taste of racing in his newly acquired black SN95 Mustang.
Randy English was another Hallett regular from Colorado and he also brought along Austin Hample is his orange / blue SN95 Mustang. Rumor has it Austin could be moving to Texas shortly so it will be awesome have him attending more TX events in the future.
It was great to have James Evans back for his 2nd official CMC weekend along with Nick Stokes for his 3rd official CMC weekend.
Todd Spickard and Steve Gernon were both in attendance and are the only 2 Texas racers who have started every single race this year, congrats to you both!!
Dylan Bryan was back and had thankfully solved his power steering and brake issues that made the last ECR event so frustrating.
Bryan Leinart made it to the track after an eventful tow up to Hallett and Ryan McFall + family showed up with their always present smiles and amazing attitudes.
Sook brought the famous Red-Shift Rita's and was in the action all weekend.
Jerry and Jay Jordan had another great Hallett showing thanks to a borrowed transmission Saturday night which gave Jerry the opportunity to give his famous 1-finger salute on Sunday, thankfully not to me this time, haha.
Sam Crumpacker was the man of the weekend running top 3 in each of the first three races and being on the top step when it mattered winning R4 and The Summer Shootout!!! Congrats Sam and everyone else that made the trip!!