The Runoffs: I had to dig deep into the Fubar files for a look at my last report. That was back in ’93 - the final year for the event at Road Atlanta. This was just my 2nd visit to Mid Ohio. The first was back in ’96 as a crewmember for Jim Render at a non-spectator National. At that event only course workers were allowed over the bridges to the infield, so my view of the track was restricted to the carrousel around to the keyhole turn. This year my Tower/Media pass gave me the run of the place thanks to Lynn Anderson and LOL. A few Tonneau readers might recognize the name Joe Bltsfysk. Back in the ’50s he appeared in "L’il Abner" cartoons as the sorry dude with a raincloud stuck over his head everywhere he went. In ’93 it rained a lot at Road Atlanta; this year it rained even more at Mid Ohio as I carry on in true Bltsfysk tradition. Driving south from Detroit just before mid-day Friday, the first rains started around Toledo and continued on and off all the way to registration, as I only missed one turn at Steam Corners headed for the track. Amazingly, except for a few scattered drops, the rain held off until about a half-hour after Friday’s final race. Thus both rain and I missed the efforts of fully one third of LOL’s participants at this year’s event. In Race 2 Steve Jondal jumped past seven F500s on the first lap from			24th on the grid and continued to move up to 13th at the checker. Jeff Auberger, running out of Milwaukee Region, led every lap except the first to win while Fred Edwards turned a record setting fastest lap of 1:31.656; a third of a second faster than FF. On a tight course the two-stroke power to weight ratio pays off! For the next race Dean Johnson’s Spitfire was gridded seventh in FP while Canadian/LOL Sprite driver Helmut Friedrich was 19th. Johnson was up to 6th on lap 16 but dropped off the chart on the last (19th) lap when his engine let go (he finished 11th). Friedrich moved up a position each of the first three laps until pitting after the 4th circuit with damage from contact. About a dozen DSRs were screaming around the track by the time I got on the property and started to get my bearings. I watched the start of the Atlantic race on the main straight as a meager field of 13 cars took the green. Brian French quickly took control from his outside pole position and put fellow CenDiv RT-41 driver Larry Connor in his mirrors for the duration of a parade-like event. 81 year old Dan Carmichael is still out there running strong to a 7th place finish. During the race I encountered both Bill Bergeron and Steve Kelly at the outside of the carrousel, and we all figured, judging from Carmichael, we can look forward to another quarter century of driving. Steve has sold out of both his auto parts business and his dirt track modified and is looking at cars, so we wandered about the paddock as Bergeron pointed out various good deals in the FC arena and we missed GT-2. The Formula Ford grid was like another dejavu with Keith Nunes ahead of John LaRue in a duplicate of last Fubar, cont. on page 3		LOL Board of Directors Regional Exceutive Greg Youngdahl Home (507) 332-0297 gregy@deskmedia.com Assistant Regional Executive Shannon Murphy Home:(612) 798-3575 blueflagger@yahoo.com Co-secretaries Steve Gingras Home: (612) 263-0739 T3sgingras@GVMF.com Norm Johnson Home: (612) 870-9503 NJohnson@EEAEngineers.com Treasurer Mark LaBarre Home: (651) 407-7293 mlabarre@telepool.com Members at Large Doug Dill Home: (612) 925-1731 dougd@edsonline.com Chad Lemmons Home: (651) 688-7976 John Niemi Home: (651) 766-8027 captmayday@aol.com LOL Web Page: http://www.scca-lol.org

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Tonneau On-Line	December 1999	Page 2
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