The year had started strong with Geoff Sykes winning races and scoring class wins at Chuckwalla and Willow Springs, but with the E46 M3 suffering heat issues at Buttonwillow and Auto Club Speedway, Sykes had lost the lead in the championship standings.
“We had made several changes to the car and the August race at Thunderhill was expected to be better, but the rest of the field was made up of very strong C Mod cars with more powerful motors and lighter overall weights,” said Sykes. “With new Yokohama slicks, I had qualified 11/1000ths off the pole, but in race traffic, the E46 M3 continued to fade from heat soak, in spite of our best efforts to cool the engine area.”
Two months later, the car was heavily improved and had already proven itself at the USTCC race at Sonoma. “Now I was raring to go at Laguna Seca and in order to have a chance at the championship, I needed class wins from here on out. In Saturday’s race, I managed to move up 3 positions, getting the valuable class win, and Sunday was even better, this time getting the class win AND finishing 2nd overall in the entire race.”
The weekend produced exciting close racing between Sykes, Dan Wennerberg and Vic Pizzino in their C-Mod cars and an awesome turn out of BMW racers in the biggest west coast event of the year for BMW CCA racing, pulled together by the hard work of Ralph Warren.
