Viper Race at Mid Ohio

DRM Takes 1st In Class Against The Venomous Vipers

April 29-30th 2000
Written by Steve Melnick

This weekend was our first attempt to de-fang the Vipers. They are a formidable opponent and great respect must be given when handling these creatures.

Some C5net supporters visit after the race.
From left to right: Mark Yingling of Fairborn Ohio,
Cliff Urbanas of Englewood Ohio, Doug Rippie,
Steve Melnick, and Jim Browning, Jr. of Corsa Performance.
Behind the camera is Dan Adovasio of the C5 Registry

We got off to a slow start leaving Minnesota late on Friday and did not arrive at our Ohio hotel until 4:00 am on Saturday morning. We set our alarms for 7:00 am, a whopping 3 hours of sleep! What made matters worse was the four hours of sleep I had the night before.

I arrived at the track at 8:30 am to find my run group on the track for the first practice session so I had to wait for qualifying to drive the track for the first time ever. All things considered I still qualified 14th in a field of 22 cars, 21 of which were Vipers.

The Field was divided up into 8 different groups from stock to Super Unlimited with professional drivers. We ranked in the Prepared class based on our modifications to Doug's C500/RSR upgrades.

Class	Once the race was under way the Rippie prepared RSR was running flawlessly. The car was neutral with just a slight push for safety. The engine screamed with power and torque in a wide power band. Doug sure knows how to set up a car. In the last week Doug installed new lower control arms with solid bushings front and rear, full roll cage and freshened motor which was only hours off the dyno, and still everything worked great right out of the box. Kudos to Doug! During the race I moved up from 14th to 10th place as I became more familiar with the track. Final results were 10th place overall and 2nd in class. Mid Ohio is a wonderful course with blind turns, carousels and off camber corners. It's very challenging for the first timer.
Stock
Super Stock
Viper ACR only
Prepared
Modified
Super Modified
Unlimited
Super Unlimited

The second race was on Sunday and I qualified 10th out of 21 cars. I was becoming more comfortable with the track and my lap times were coming down. But as fate would have it the right rear rotor cracked in half during qualifying forcing us to run a rotor from Al Korbel's C500/RSR which was running in the non-competition group. His new rotor was just a little too thick and it caused the pads to rub while driving. This raised the temperature and caused a strong twist of the car under braking. I was not able to dive into corners but we still had a good showing and finished 14th overall and 1st in class!

Al Korbel not only finished 1st in the modified class but had the fastest times of all the non-competition Vipers during the the weekend. Thanks to Al and of course Doug Rippie, the Corvettes showed the Vipers that we are a strong contender and still America's Sports Car!

Stay tuned for the next Viper vs. Corvette clash. There is more to come.