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QuantSPEED Newsletter --- May 2009 The 2009 Season is Officially Underway! Colorado weather forced the cancellation of several early events this season, but at long last we got the racing underway. High Plains Raceway [website] opened for first laps in April, and I was lucky enough to take the Honda S2000 out for a play date on Friday April 17. Driving the course at speed for the first time was incredibly exciting - every corner seems to be an amazing combination of speed, elevation change and technical detail. Most of you have already heard me rave about the 2.55 mile course with it's 15 turns and 300 feet of elevation change in every lap. Fast forward to the first race weekend and multiply the excitement by 100 to measure my impression of the track in the formula car!! Rain prevented us from running a full test day on Friday May 1, but I did get enough seat time in to know that truly quick laps at HPR will require serious cojones. The rain continued on Saturday and I opted not to race in the wet, reasoning that it was better to save the car for a race in the sun forecast for Sunday. My qualifying time on Sunday morning was only 3 hundreths of a second off my nearest competitor and I was psyched for an intense race. Watch my qualifying lap here: Unfortunately his car was taken out in a spectacular wreck in turn 1 of the race brought on by a sports racer that lost its front brakes. You can read a message board thread about the crash here and watch the incident from the perspective of my in-car camera: Although I successfully avoided the carnage at the start of the race, after the restart I only got 5 laps in before 2nd gear exploded. According to Carl this was an extremely atypical failure beacuse instead of shearing the teeth off, the entire gear split into three giant chunks. The chunks destroyed most of the gear box internals in just the half lap it took to return to the paddock.  As a racer it was hard to walk away from the weekend with no race finishes, but as a driver I couldn't ask for anything more than a weekend of fast laps at High Plains Raceway in my formula car!!  photo: John Waugh, www.johnwaugh.com NEXT RACE: Double National races at High Plains Raceway July 4 & 5, with a full "big wings only" test day on Thursday July 2 and open lapping on Friday July 3. Spectating is always free and open to the public! Finding SPEED Earlier this spring Christine attended a two day driving seminar led by professional racer and coach Ross Bentley. Read part 1 of
this post on his tips for Going Faster. There will be much more to report in the next newsletter. In the
meantime, both driver and crew keep practicing HPR on the rFactor simulator!
 Denver Auto Show Quantspeed was invited to be the feature of Mazda's Denver Auto Show booth this year. The car looked fantastic positioned up on the center platform. Mazda even customized their Auto Show coupon with a photo of the race car and a directions to visit quantspeed.com to learn more about the driver. Even given the muted economic environment, the Auto Show coordinators said attendance was only down a few percent over 2008! Christine spent all five days of the show attending to questions and signing coupons. We hope to be invited back next year and to coordinate with Mazda for other local marketing events throughout the season. 
 NEXT MARKETING EVENT: The 26th Annual Cerebral Palsy Concours d'Elegance, Sunday June 14 9am-3pm at Arapahoe Community College. More details at the show's website. Governor Ritter, Start Your Engine!
Christine helped organize the Media Gran Prix Event at High Plains Raceway on Thursday May 14.
Designed to raise awareness of the new track, the event garnered national press attention with reporters from
several television stations, newspapers and magazines in attendance. Press and local dignitaries experienced the
intensity of the race track first hand as they were treated to rides at speed in
GO 4 IT race cars.
Colorado Governor Bill Ritter attended the event and cut a commemorative ribbon before strapping into a Z06 Corvette race
car for hot laps with Micheal Pettiford at the wheel. It didn't take much prodding before Ritter himself was driving the Corvette
with Mike at his side coaching him to "go faster"! Watch the 9News coverage of the day's events
here via YouTube
and keep your eyes peeled for Christine taking pictures in her sunhat!
 From left to right: Governor Bill Ritter, Denise Longwell, Christine Jerritts 2009 Sponsors: THANK YOU We are both immensely greatful and honored to have the following official sponsors in 2009:
TARA Labs [website] - The Cable Technology Leaders. TARA is a pioneer in audio cable design and engineering, building the very best from the mild all the way to the critically acclaimed Zero and Omega cables which represent the finest in the industry. TARA finds performance through state-of-the-art materials and superior engineering, not marketing gimmicks or "snake oil".
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