Round 1 of the 2007 NASA Socal region Honda Challenge Championship took place at California Speedway on March 17^th, and 18^th. It was a perfect weekend for racing with sunny skies and temps in the high 70s.

The excitement level was high for the first round of the season. California Speedway has become the traditional season opener and always provides a place for great racing with its’ high banks and it’s flat out oval section. The Socal region started off on the right foot with 27 Honda Challenge cars showing up to race in this first round of the season. The weekend saw 4 cars competing in H1, 4 cars in the new H2 class, and 19 cars in the H4 class.

The Saturday race proved to be a very exciting one. During the Qualifying session, Jack Mardikian, a new comer to the Honda Challenge series was able to snap pole position away from Bernardo Martinez for the H1 class. Team Road Race Geek was able to grab pole in H2 and Sam Rothchild took pole in H4.

The green flag dropped and the race got underway. The story was pretty much the same in all 3 classes. Bernardo Martinez was able to take the lead in H1 and hold it right to the checkered flag.

Team Road Race Geek was able to pull off the same in H2 as well as Sam Rothchild in H4. Each drove a very smart race and took the victory with a commanding lead. In this race, the exciting battle for position was the 2^nd place position in H4. It was between Jeremy Croiset, Benny Pecqueur, and John Tecce. The entire race saw these 3 swapping positions, back and fourth, each racing extremely clean and hard. It could have been anyone’s race at any point, but in the end Jeremy Croiset was able to fend off the strong CRX’s of Benny Pecqueur who took 3^rd and John Tecce who finished in 4^th.

Sundays qualifying proved to be about the same as Saturday showing who would be challenging for the lead in each class. Bernardo Martinez was able to set pole in H1 with a commanding time of 1:52.885. In H2, Team Road Race Geek took the pole once again. The surprise of the day was in H4. Arizona racer Scott Brewer was able to grab pole away from Sam Rothchild by a margin of only 0.182. H4 looked like it would be a very exciting race because 9 cars had qualified within 2 seconds of each other while the first 5 were within a second of one another.

Time for the race came and the large Honda Challenge field went to grid. After the first lap, it was fairly clear that we would probably be seeing a repeat of Saturday’s performance. Bernardo Martinez again led till the end of the race with a commanding drive over the rest of the field. The same could be said of Team Road Race Geek. Sam Rothchild followed up his Saturday race win with another fantastic drive to take the double win for the weekend.

Scott Brewer was able to put in a smart drive and finish in the second spot followed by Jeremy Croiset making up the top 3. The exciting part of the race had to local trickster Tom Paule and Benny pecqueur’s race. Each of them drove very clean and had a terrific battle for the 6^th finishing position. It’s the perfect example to show that you don’t need to finish 1^st to have a terrific race and exciting ending!

If this race is any indicator for what’s in store for the rest of the season in the Socal region’s Honda Challenge Championship, it’s going to be one amazing year with large car counts and on track battles for 1^st through 20^th!

For the next round, we head to the technical track of Buttonwillow Raceway for battle on April 14^th-15^th. We hope to see you there for another weekend of exciting racing!

Some video about the weekend can be found here.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1068881877500349700&pr=goog-sl

Photos by: Reginald Legaspi