Some racing action at Carolina Motorsports Park.

After Sebring, I had another local coaching opportunity, this time with SCCA at Carolina Motorsports Park. Once again I was coaching Ashton Harrison in her Spec Miata endeavors.

Ashton hadn’t been to CMP in a year, so getting her reacquainted with the circuit and all of its nuances and challenges was our first priority. She had a race on both Saturday and Sunday, and Ashton knew that she would be moving forward in Saturday’s race as she continued to get reacclimated to the track. She started 12^th on Saturday and finished inside the top ten.

Mazda Tough! This Spec Miata ate a chunk of asphalt and kept going!

On Sunday, after a lot of hard studying overnight, Ashton qualified just outside the top five for that day’s race. There was a lot of great competition in the race, and Ashton came away with more experience both in racing and dealing with traffic. Thanks to CMP’s surface, Ashton also got a lot of knowledge about tire management and tire degradation throughout the race, which we know can be tricky! She didn’t get the result she wanted on Sunday, finishing 11^th, but she’s really looking forward to her next race, which will be at VIR in May.

(Are any of you Speed Secrets Weekly subscribers? I’m excited to be one of this week’s guest writers for their 100th issue. Congrats to Speed Secrets on the milestone!)

Yes, the dash reads 23 degrees. A cold morning at CMP!

A future racer doing some lead-follow laps in a kart.