Summit Point, September 4

It has been said in racing, that no such thing exists as a perfect race weekend. Other than a missed pole position in Saturday’s afternoon qualifying session, the Hankook Tires/Flatoutracing.net team got close to such a perfect race weekend. How close? Well they missed a perfect sweep of the weekend’s honors by less than 8/100’s of a second.

Hankook Tires/Flatoutracing.net’s Jon Kofod dominated Round’s 7 and 8 of the Annual MARRS Labor Day Double race weekend held every Labor Day weekend at Summit Point Raceway. Kofod would end the weekend with two wins, one pole, and fastest laps in both Sunday and Monday’s race.

Saturday qualifying would be greeted with near torrential downpour as the field of nearly 50 cars in ITA, ITB and IT7 took to the grid. The rain would intensify during the session and severe lack of visibility would bring out the black flag as multiple incidents off track had to be addressed. Kofod would end up on pole in his #44 Hankook Tires/Flatoutracing.net Acura Integra, by a slim margin of less than 2/10ths of a second over the ITA Honda Civic of Sean Christie. MARRS point leader, Kirk Dohne, whom Kofod has battled with all season would line up in the second row beside 3rd place in points, Gregg Ginsberg in the # 72 CRX Si. This would set the grid for Sunday’s race.

Saturday afternoon qualifying would determine the starting order for Monday’s race. Vastly improved weather and some cloud breakthrough warmed the track enough for most of the front-runners, including Dohne, Ginsberg and Kofod to venture out on dry slick tires for the session. In the end Dohne would end up beating Kofod to pole by less than 8/100th’s of a second, ending Kofod’s streak of three straight poles at Summit. Kofod would round out the front row with Ginsberg in third position.

Sunday’s race was a repeat of MARRS V as Kofod and Dohne quickly pulled away from the field of ITA, ITB and IT7 cars. As has been the case most of the season, Dohne’s 240SX was able to get the jump into turn one but Kofod kept his car even as the two ended up side by side through turns three, four and five. Dohne was able to get ahead by turn six.

Ginsberg did mount a serious challenge for the first few laps as Kofod and Dohne spent much of the time going through corners side by side but by lap five the two front-runners had opened up a large gap. On lap seven Kofod got inside of Dohne in the carousel and made it stick. Dohne was never more than a car length or two behind but traffic aided Kofod in the closing laps to bring home the win for Hankook Tires and Flatoutracing.net. Dohne finished second and Ginsberg third.

Monday’s race initially looked like it would be a three-way affair between Dohne, Kofod and Ginsberg as the three points leaders traded spots the first few laps. But on lap five Kofod got by Dohne on the front straight and immediately opened up a slight margin as Dohne struggled with worn tires. Dohne would eventually get caught and passed by Ginsberg’s CRX as Kofod by now had completely checked out and had a healthy 10 second lead. Only heavy traffic and a spin by Ginsberg in turn five would allow Dohne to get back within sight of Kofod’s #44 Integra. But it was too little too late as Kofod took home his second win of the weekend and fastest lap for the race by a sizable margin.

“What a weekend. With the exception of a broken wheel stud after Sunday’s race, the weekend couldn’t have played out any better” noted Kofod. “Once again Hankook’s Z214’s just never gave up and were the fastest tire on the track all weekend. I was running faster lap times with each lap and pulling a larger and large gap on Kirk and Gregg until the gap got large enough I could afford to back off” stated Kofod.

“It was quite an effort to get here this weekend and winning in the fashion we did made it all the more worthwhile. We didn’t even get the car back from the paint shop until Friday afternoon and my mechanic Brian Curry did an awesome job putting the car back together, staying at our shop until around 2 am Saturday morning. We literally loaded the car onto the trailer and drove to the track”.

Special thanks also goes out to the rest of the crew at Curry’s Auto Service, including Trevor Bell, Justin Curry, Steve Sobonya and Andrew Moore who helped get the car ready for this weekend. Special thanks to Kearney’s Racing, particularly  John Cummings and Linda Kearny, who aided the team in repairing a broken wheels stud prior to Monday’s race.

At the track, crew chief Sean Banerjee kept things organized and provided the same valuable assistance he has done all season in running the Hankook/Flatoutracing effort.

Special thanks to our corporate sponsors, Hankook Tires USA, Guident Technologies, Inc., and Curry’s Auto Service of Northern Virginia.