Summit Point, Apr 30

The Flatoutracing/iCarp team sponsored by Hankook Tires opened the SCCA Mid Atlantic Road Racing Series (MARRS) in strong fashion this past weekend with Jon Kofod finishing 3rd in Sunday’s feature race and teammate Andrew Zimmermann taking a hard fought 6th place.

With perfect weather all weekend the stage was set for a huge field of ITA and ITB class cars. Kofod and Zimmermann, running in ITA class qualified 2nd and 8th respectively in the morning qualifying session. In the afternoon qualifying session Zimmermann switched to a newer Hankook compound and was able to shave an entire second off his qualifying time to improve to 7th position for Sunday’s race. Kofod found an additional half second but was knocked to 3rd position for the race behind the ITA Nissan 240 SX of Kirk Dohne and the Acura Integra of Rick Benazic. The leaders were separated by a few tenths of a second.

A total of 52 cars formed the opening grid of race, with 32 cars in the faster ITA class. Once the green flag dropped Kofod’s Integra got a great start and was able to draft Dohne’s 240 SX into turn one ahead of Benazic’s Acura. Dohne and Kofod opened up a small gap for the first two laps but on lap three Kofod ran wide at turn six and Banazic got a run out of turn 10 and passed Kofod in turn 1 for the second spot. Both Kofod and Benazic started reeling in Dohne’s 240 with Gregg Ginsberg following inches behind Kofod and Benziac.

Benazic and Dohne traded laps back and forth for the next few minutes and Kofod and Ginsberg battled each other. Finally on lap nine Ginsberg got a run on Kofod in turn 10 and took third place and then proceeded to pass Benazic in turn 3 for second place.

Benazic and Kofod then proceeded to close in on the leaders when Ginsberg spun in turn 5 with three laps to go. Dohne and Benazic crossed the finish lines just inches apart with Kofod right behind them. Ginsberg finished in 4th spot.

Zimmermann ended up finishing 6th in ITA class but struggled with heavy traffic throughout the race, continually having to make risky moves to get by slower ITB traffic.

Flatoutracing/iCarp wishes to thank their primary sponsor Hankook Tires and also Guident Technologies, Inc.

Kofod will be campaigning his ITA car at the second and third rounds of the MARRS series at VIR in two weeks time and Zimmermann will continue his Honda Challenge title chase at Summit Point in June.