The boys from Oregon opened the first round of the West Coast Braggin' Rights Championship taking 4 of the top 5 spots.

It's a beautiful weekend at Laguna, sunny skies, no clouds and temp in the high 60s - perfect weather. 40 cars registered and 38 started the first race. Last year there were 29 cars with 2 from Oregon. This year 11 Oreong Region drivers made the trip with a serious attempt to win the WCBR Championship.

Bob Breton was on the pole with Todd Harris sharing the front row. Lee Douglas, Steve Fogg, Umberto Milletti, Ed Railton, Dan Halloran and Jim Devenport, Bill Booth, and ricky Lee rounding out the top 10.

At the start Breton took the lead but spun in 11 coming on to the main straight early in the race. There was lots of action in the back reminding us that some people call our class Spec Wrecker Fords. We earned it today.

Todd Butler got wide out of 4, attempted to drive his way out of the gravel but as he reentered the track darted across the track and hit the wall hard. This created a two lap double yellow with pace car.

On the restart Harris was in the lead but Milletti hit the throttle first and rear ended Harris. This not a good thing to do in an SRF and Milletti retired soon after with steam coming out of the broken radiator.

At the finish it was:

Harris (OR)
Douglas (OR) also fast lap
Fogg (OR)
Devenport (SFR)
Halloran (OR)
Boyle (SFR)
Railton (SFR)
Lee (OR)
Bogg (SFR)
Booth (SFR)

This puts Oregon region in the leadbwithbthe next race early Sunday morning and the final 2 races next weekend in Portland at the 52nd Rose Cup Race Weekend.

More results after tomorrows race.

Thanks for the report Dan, it's been a great event so far.
Point of contention, Douglas was running that race for SF region points, you get him in Portland, we get him here.
But it's probably not fair that we get credit for Jim Boggs, who is out from New Jersey. (Maybe we can convince him to come to Portland with us).

The first round of the West Coast Braggin Rights is now in the history books. The series started in with a double at Laguna Seca and culminated in Portland with a 40 minute race at the Rose Cup. Let me say that the Oregon Region won, but just barely (other people would call it a sweep, but I am not one for such trivial details). Being that it was the first year for the WCBR, four of us represented SFR and made the trek north. They included myself, Bob Gardner, and two HSE arrive and drive customers Court Cardinal & Mike Boyle - supported by the crew over at HSE Racing - Dave Harriman and Mark Stalhammer. The SFR had some "minor" challenges to overcome in the first round of the series, like the strength and depth of Oregon Region's spec racer drivers. Next year, SFR will have to work on rising up to the task at hand.

Personally, this was my first (definitly not last) foray out of the SF region, I have to say that PIR was a very fun track, technical (T10 and T11 were a frickin blast!), and there were some great passing zones at the ends of the two straights. All the people were very friendly and welcomed us out of towners to their home track. I just want to say thank you to all those that we met/talked to - they helped make our weekend that much more enjoyable, including Pro Drive (sponsor of the series), the Flat Out Crew, SCCA - Mike Davies (totally cool meeting and talking to him) and the other drivers - all super friendly and reminded me of what a friendly family the SRF community is.

I don't have much of a race report - sorry, I started behind the eight ball, having missed the test day. So I had one short session on a new track, then qualifing. As you can expect, I qualified as an official backmarker. Then in each of the two races, somehow I got two great starts thru the chicane, passing 3 or 4 cars and was doing real well - right up until the moment I spun.

A special thanks to Bob Gardner for taking some time to show me how to read track data over the weekend - in between working on the oil leak on his old motor and R&R'ing a new motor.

Next year's series hopefully will include representatives from Cal Club (the inter-regional scheduling did not work this first year) such that WCBR Series will have some participants from the entire West Coast, from BC down to SoCAL. Looking forward to next year's series.