Friday, January 07, 2005 MONTEREY, Calif. (Jan. 7) - The 46 karters vying for valuable seats in the 2005 Skip Barber Regional Race Series and the Skip Barber National Championship Presented by RACER were met with variable wet to very wet conditions at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca for the first day of evaluations during the Skip Barber Karting Scholarship Shoot-out.
Champ Car Rookie of the Year A.J. Allmendinger is one of this year's Karting Shoot-out judges, here giving feedback to Chris Wehrheim following an on-track session.
Following some autocross and skidpad work in the morning, the karters were divided into three groups for their first on-track session. The drivers in Group 3 had the worst of the conditions, and the quickest in that group was Justin Larson. The track conditions for Groups 1 and 2 were relatively similar, however, and Chris Carmody was fastest in G1 and Jody Vorrath topped the time sheets in G2. ''Great job by all the kids, very heads-up, nobody had any incident of note,'' said Randy Buck, chief coordinator of the Shoot-out. ''There's obviously some talent out there.''
Group 3 prepares to head out onto Laguna's famous two miles. Photos by Rock Rizzo
Saturday's weather is expected to be the same; the Shoot-out ends Sunday, which at this point is also expected to see precipitation. Rick Roso
