20 cars made the call to grid on March 11/12 for the 1^st point’s race of the season in the exciting SoCal Honda Challenge series at California Speedway. The weekend started with a fear of rain. Many racers were scrambling to find a good set of rain tires because most of us here in beautiful sunny Socal are not accustom to dealing with a rainy weekend.

Saturday turned out to be a rainy day. Qualifying went well. The session saw some light rain which made it hard to put down some fast laps. H1 only saw Sam Higashi out for qualifying because the other 2 H1 entrants (Bernardo Martinez and John Thawley) were busy trying to tie up a few last minute items to pass tech. In H4, Edik Stepanyan was able to put down a blazing lap and out qualify the entire field followed by Jeremy Croiset, and Benny Pecqueur making up the top 3. Ten minutes before cars came to the grid for Saturday’s race, the rain began to fall hard. By the time all the cars headed out from grid, the rain was still falling hard, and the track was very wet. The green flag flew, and the cars were off. Right from the start, it was clear that this was a race for survival. There was so much standing water on the track that making passes under braking was near impossible. Many cars had to pit just to wipe the inside of their windshields. At the checked flag, Sam Higashi took the win in H1, with John Thawley (2^nd) and Bernardo Martinez (3^rd) taking the other podium spots. H4 was a much closer battle, with Edik Stepanyan taking the win overall beating out even the quicker H1 cars, with Jeremy Croiset in a close 2^nd followed by Benny Pecqueur taking 3^rd from Paul Pate on the very last turn of the last lap! All the drivers showed an amazing amount of maturity because we had no contact in those miserable conditions.

It was clear that we would have much tighter racing action on Sunday because of the dry conditions and close qualifying grid. We did have a couple small showers, but nothing significant. The grid for the race had changed with Bernardo Martinez on pole, followed by Sam Higashi, and John Thawley for H1. Edik Stepanyan again took the top spot in H4, followed by Jeremy Croiset, and Benny Pecqueur. From the start, Martinez was able to take the lead and hold off Higashi who followed closely behind the entire race. Thawley finished in 3^rd. H4 was very exciting. From the drop of the green, Edik Stepanyan and Jeremy Croiset simply took off and left the rest of the H4 field. It was a very close and exciting battle with lead changes and nose to tail action the entire race, but in the end Edik Stepanyan was able to hold off Jeremy Croiset for the win and take the double win for the weekend! 3^rd was a good battle between Benny Pecqueur and Thomas Okihisa in which Benny eventually took the final podium spot.

If this weekend was a sign of what’s to come, we are all in for an exciting season of Honda Challenge here in Socal. A special thanks to the racers who came all the way from Vegas and Arizona to make the racing action what it was! See you all next month at ButtonWillow!

For more pics, go here!