Pretty unbelievably good week @ SCCA Solo Nationals and ProSolo Championships. For a small shop that consists of two people, I couldnt be more proud of my customers, and the number of them who took trophies and championships home. Heres the list of thanks and congrats: Im going to start with Shelly Monfort who not only won her 6th straight and 8th overall Nationals, but was also bestowed with the Driver of Eminence Award. Women have won it before, but not for a long time... and Im just that much more proud to have won it myself now that Shelly has. SSR... filled with cars Ive helped with or pretty much been trusted to setup. 17 of the 29 cars in SSR have some sort of parts of ours on them, and/or complete top to bottom setups, and half the trophy spots (the other half were either Porsches or a Viper). Im going to jump ahead here to STX and STXL because of the shear size of the class and depth of the field... and the results: Andrew Pallotta and Annie Gill for proving that my getting an FR-S early and working on the setup and sway bar was the right thing to do. Andrew is now a 2 time Champion and hauled himself from 4th on day 1 to the win. Bryan Heitkotter deserves some big credit for taking a car nobody thought was fast enough and finishing 2nd, but also for making the call to change to a softer set of Hypercoil springs the week before Nationals after debating it most of the year. Jason Ruggles for trusting in me to call me up a month or two again for one of our patented (ok not really but very complete) FT86 STX setups. Jason was 2nd on day 1, finished 4th. Ricky Crow finished 6th in Amy and Karl Colemans BRZ...another base strano setup. Don Slevin taking the 11th trophy in his FR-S, and Tom Reynolds for his 16th trophy. Remember this is class of 67!!! And there were cars here with HUGE money spent on them... titanium exhausts and $4k shock setups too. :) STXL, more of the same. Annie Gill won in Annies car.. she won going away for her 6th (I think dont shoot me if its more) title. 3rd was Amy Coleman in a BRZ with a lot of parts from us, and 4th and final trophy went to Caitlin Dunlap in her Works Cooper S. Lane Borg wins the first B-Street title with our 8472 sway bar (he calls it magic, maybe as its also won SSRL and A-Street). But also for working hard on testing tires and comparing Corvette notes. :) Lanes 2nd title. Mark Daddio for trusting in my setup enough to run that same bar, the same shocks, and the same settings I run on my car to win the first A-street title (his 11th). Ryan Otis for his 2nd place in AS, and Manny Ruiz for his 7th and first Nationals trophy in a normal C6 Z51 Corvette. And Mike Johnson for a trophy that was not easy to win and pulling himself up a lot of spots from day 1 struggles. ASL.. all 3 trophy spots are customers of Strano Performance Parts DS was won my Mike Wood. While I had nothing to do with that car, Mike is a customer of mine from back in the Shelby days. Next car he owns, I hope hell be back (this one was borrowed). Robert Carpenter for his 2nd place finish in his new/old Miata in E-Street. F-Street: John Laughlin for his fast time on Day 2 and for the trust in my opinion that caused him to spend some serious funds to get a better set of tires on his Shelby GT. Bark rian Burdette for his 5th place in his 2012 5.0 following up his F-stock title from last year. And Doug Wille for charging headlong into the Gen 5 1LE Camaro (see FSL below). F-Street Ladies: Jackie Mutschler for adding yet another jacket to her closest in the new family Gen 5 1LE Camaro big snoopy. G-Street... Mark Scroggs gets big props here. Using the Strano Performance 3 way adjustable 22mm rear bar on his Focus (and Konis and Magnaflow exhaust we set him up with too), he won an SCCA National Championship in his first try, a Nationals Rookie!!!! Thank you for trusting in me and my advice! ASR A-Street-Race tire.. One and only year for this one. Formerly A-Stock. Brian Coulson won a battle of what was pretty much spec cars. 8 cars. 7 of which were all on the same shocks, same sway bars, and same tires. The other one was a BMW 1M. This was a drivers battle all the way, and over the years that A-stock and ASR have been around it was won only by 3 cars.. All C5 Corvettes and all customers of Strano Performance Parts. Paul Kozlak is back! Jeff Jacobs took the last trophy over last years National Champion Tony Savini. Hell 2.6 seconds covered 1st to 7th with total times of 120+ seconds. STS: Ian Baker, 2nd again... but always in the hunt. I think it has to happen next year! And Mike Snyder (the PA version) for his 4th place finish. Mikes driving has been coming on lately and this was his best finish in something like 15 Nationals. DSP: Wow. .017 short. John Vitamvas fought car breakage at the Pro, cleared his head, led day 1 and barely lost day 2 to finish 2nd. Julian Garfield finished 3rd (with his mom Lisa riding shotgun!) in Johns 330Ci. The same car I ran in NJ Tour and Wilmington ProSolo. John has worked hard on it and over the winter a new engine is coming. I wish I could have been there to coach a little but I was running the same time, that was the only thing that kept me from being there to root John V on. Chris Dressler was 6th and Kevin Henry 8th! ESP.. this will take a lot of typing. Jadrice Toussaint much like a lot of the STX guys trusted me to do his baseline setup, and while Marske did the work (except the diff I did that late at night @ DC Pro), most of the setup and parts on there are Strano Performance sourced. Jadrice finished 2nd .077 behind a lighter, smaller car with more torque. But Billy Brooks and Greg McCance both get just desserts for dealing with a clutch issue in the WRX and getting it to the end (Billy won). Dave Heinrich was 3rd, Ryan Finch 5th (while Ryan isnt a customer per se) I was somewhat involved with his car from previous owners). Dave Ogburn in my former Camaro was 6th. Dave Feighner in 8th with some nice new DBA brakes on his 1995 Cobra R (a real one). Shawn Alexander for his first trophy in 10th, and Mark Marske for his 11th on debut @ Nationals. Honorable mentions go to Adam George for battling lots of engine issues on the run up to Lincoln and getting through them, and to his co-driver Sam Vassallo for batting in general. Looks like about 24 of the 37 cars in ESP are customers of Strano Performance. Two of those cars I won National Championships in myself in days past!!! CP... this one is new. And .028 was all that separated my friend Mark Madarash in whats just an ESP car on slicks with some LCA brackets from winning CP over a real CP car with probably 250 more HP. Mark and I have battled a lot over the years so this makes me happy. I bet some more ESP guys move to CP given this showing. :) Im sure I missed a lot of folks. Im sorry if I did, but its not possible to remember everyone from all the years and when thinking about some 1100+ entrants its going to happen. In the end I couldnt be more proud of all that my friends and customers accomplished this week past. And thank you all for your business... and more importantly your friendship.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 02:55:38 +0000
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