The Hoppers Sport Academy team was also a lot more bullish, major work had been done on the Subaru BRZ and lead driver AtomStew was looking forward to not only making the grid but also being competitive.  A Second car was entered for the series first lady driver, Scarletwitch, but the car wasn’t ready in time and the team decided to wait until Road Atlanta next week.  We did have a completely new entry on the grid, as an Aston Martin Vantage was entered for new driver DaveyGallardo, who was running the car independently.

The grid had Mike and Bradders on the front row, but they were swamped by row 2 on the rundown to the first corner, by the fast starting J47TEE and the usual rocket ship off the line, RangersRick.  Two others though were even quicker than that, as Kinkycowboys and Devilsbogeyman were both past Bradders Ferrari before they turned into the first corner, Kinky though came across the front of the TVR of Mike and amazingly the Audi went sideways but corrected itself before any harm was done, and this left Kinky in third.  The same scenario was then played out at the 4th corner as Devilsbogeyman slid in front of the championship leader, held the slide when the contact was made and he was up to 4th.  The front row pair had been completely mugged.  Out front and J47TEE was having an awesome opening lap and the Porsche was mega down the long straights and dancing through the corners that it crossed the line two seconds to the good, Rick was second followed by Kinky who was under massive pressure from the Mercedes of Devilsbogeyman, 5th was Mike, 6th was BMR Sutton, Robraceruk was 7th, Bradders making a couple of small errors which was unlike him, was down to 8th, whilst Nitro and Basslinejunkio completed the top 10.  Devilsbogeyman is the lap record holder around Sebring, and the circuit seems to suit the little Mercedes A45, as he was putting Kinky under pressure for third, although he now had BMR Sutton closing in behind.  The second Mercedes may not have been as rapid off the line, but Badbeat was starting to pick cars off further back, and all of sudden we had a completely different picture going on in AM, with Basslinejunkio and Wambogini looking far from the fastest in class.  Devilsbogeyman found himself up to third briefly on lap 3, as Kinky got the Audi completely wrong in the final bend and hit the wall, dropping him back.  The Mercedes stay in the top 3 was brief, as although the car was quick on the straights its braking wasn’t the best, and he was mugged first by BMR Sutton, then the recovering Bradderstig and also by NitroRushMini and Robraceruk.   These two were going at a decent pace, and have been impressive in recent rounds and here at Sebring it was no different.  The Lotus had more Pi and was looking quicker than the JDR Racing Corvette but it was struggling to get past.  On lap 7 it had a go under the bridges on the run down to turn 5, but the two made contact and the Lotus hit the wall.  It was just inside the pit window for the RML Development car that with the bit of damage he had he decided to stop.  Such was the pace of the field, this stop dropped him to 19th place, but he was about to be joined in the pits by his sister team car of the Championship Leader NikeMikeRules.  Mike had been battling just outside the top 10 with a large group of cars, the TVR was as quick as nearly everyone through the middle part of the lap, but was slower on the two straights.  Most in the pitlane had been left wondering if he was  also being careful down to preserving fuel and not stopping, but that plan was about to go out of the window.  Going on to the back straight the TVR got it all wrong hitting the inside tyre wall and spinning him into the path of the recovering Kinky.  This two hit each other hard and a pit for repairs was needed, lap 7 was not good to the RML team’s hopes.  As for Cerberus, the stop had dropped Kinky to 16th, and now we were about to witness one of the best comebacks in the history of the Thunder Enduro, but more of that in a bit.  The second Audi was having another torrid day.  The team had some engineering help from RML to try and dial out some of the handling woes with the little Audi TT, for Kinky this would turn out to work, but for Devil Lord it was another difficult day in the office.  Devil Lord followed the feet of his team mate on lap 6 and hit the outside wall at the last bend, this dropped him further back, and from there he had a rather lonely race coming home in 12th place.  He must be hoping that the RML tweaks make a difference to his car at Road Atlanta next week, a circuit he was very impressive at last season.