World Challenge Road Atlanta

[RacinM3]

Some great road racing this weekend.....in the Touring Class Peter Cunningham and Randy Pobst, then Cunningham and Charles Espenlaub put on absolute clinincs in hard, door-to-door low-contact (mostly no-contact) road racing.

The weekend was only tainted by the Papis/Liddell incident in the GT race, but I gotta say if I was in Max's position I don't know that I'd have been able to avoid him either. It's easy to comment on those incidents from a La-Z-Boy.

[oddlycalm]

There is some seriously good driving talent in the series. Seems like they get it right pretty much every week. The Lidell/Papis coming together was a bit puzzling. What in the hell happened to Lidell after he passed the apex? Looked like he missed a shift or didn't get on the throttle right away.

oc

[RacinM3]

I don't know. I think he was covering the inside line, but you're right, regardless of that, he came off the apex first, and should have been back on the throttle before Max, even if he made a mistake. It looked almost as if he parked. Combine that with Papis wanting to get a good run off the corner and taking the normal line, Max was hard on the throttle. I don't know that anyone could have anticipated Liddell slowing that much. That's why I say it was an unavoidable contact for Papis.

Too bad, but the right guy won the race. Papis was all over Liddell the last two laps, but Liddell definitely deserved the second spot on the podium.

Papis was fined $5,000 and docked 10 points, but was allowed to keep the win.