2006 S2000 Challenge Series Final Results…
While the Honda Cup season was concluding on the big track at Willow Springs this past weekend, the S2000 Challenge Series was wrapping up right next door on the Streets of Willow road course. The Stock, Modified, and Unlimited divisions had already been decided, but the Production Class was still up for grabs between the two top contenders Kelvin Yong (HunterEZ) and Sriram Balasubramaniam (pantyraider).
At the start of the weekend, Sri had a narrow nine point lead, but he was able to extend it Saturday with a class victory that gave him a 15 point advantage coming into Sunday’s competition. (Yong did not compete Saturday due to a previous commitment) Unfortunately, on the last run Saturday, Sri’s transmission failed and it looked like he would be unable to compete Sunday. This opened the door for Yong to move in and take the championship with a win in Sunday’s competition.
Sunday came, and as expected, Yong was extremely fast. The only way for Sri to maintain his championship lead was to somehow compete and finish no lower than 4th place. With only second and third gear available, he set out to do his best. The production class has become by far the most competitive in the Challenge series, and Sri definitely had his work cut out for him with Aaron (Nimbus), Walter (pointa-b-c), Alejandro (Alejo), Daryl (Daryl) and a host of others doing their level best to top him.
When the dust settled, Sri had won the Production Class championship over Kelvin by a scant three points… the closest finish ever for a champion in the S2000 Challenge series! Congratulations to both these excellent competitors and to all the other podium finishers in all the classes.
The Stock champion for 2006 is Ray Saeini (rsaeini, 44 points) with Mark Tiberi (dragonheart, 33 points) second and Doug Griswold (28 points) third.
The Modified class was won by S2ki editorial staffer Drew Gross (drewchie, 104 points) with Aaron Chung (Nimbus, 56 points) second and Raymond Navarro (Raymund, 36 points) third.
As reported above, the Production Class was won by a very narrow margin by Sriram Balasubramaniam (pantyraider, 55 points) over Kelvin Yong (HunterEZ, 52 points) , with Walter Chen (pointa-b-c, 30 points) narrowly edging S2ki founder Eric Petersen (cthree, 28 points) off the podium for a third place finish.
The Unlimited Class was very sparsely contended this year with most of the participants electing to compete in Honda Cup instead. None the less, there was a competition and here are the results: Honda Cup bronze medalist Richard Laifatt (plaifatt, 45 points) follows up his three consecutive Modified Class victories by taking the Unlimited class for ’06. Rylan Hazelton (krazik, 25 points) was the runner up, with Kyle Schon (12 points) finishing third.
The 2007 S2000 Challenge Series kicks off January 6th and 7th at Streets of Willow and with a big new crop of competitors entering… 2007 looks to be the hottest year ever for the series. Stays tuned for lots of updates as the ’07 season progresses, and please join us in congratulating all the 2006 podium finishers.