Now that was some racing! Was able to watch the second round of the Autobacs Super GT series held this time at Suzuka Circuit on Monday (while the third round was going on in Japan) and with the sun out and the track in great shape for racing we finally got some good racing action going on. However, what we didn't get is another race with the StudieGLAD Racing BMW Z4. Moving along though lets get back to the cars that did show up to race.

The GT500 race was finally a well fought race from start to finish. Well Ok there was some parts in the middle that was really boring but the beginning was a hard fought battle between the Motul GTR and a pair of hungry Lexus SC430s that were looking to take the lead away from the GTRs and while there was a bit of traffic helping the lead GTR get away from the SC430s for a while anyways. Even after getting passed by the Impul GTR the Zent Lexus SC430 was able to fight back from 7th place all the way up to 1st place with a huge battle between 1-3 during that last 10 laps or so of the race. First it started with Petronas and Zent jumping down MOtul's back side almost sending Zent off course. Petronas was able to pass the Motul GTR and Zent was able to follow behind quickly leaving Motul in third wondering what happened. Then Zent went after Petronas with aggressive driving side by side getting a little bump action going but not giving up any space until Petronas backed off a bit and Zent was able to surge ahead and take 1st place. All within the last five laps left to go. Sadly Petronas nor Motul were able to fight back due to a full course yellow which would end the racing for the day.

On the GT300 side there was even more battles going on. Not so much for 1st place mind you as that was won by the Hankook Porsche 911 that started on Pole and pretty much staid there the entire race with out much of a threat from anyone else. The major player during the GT300 was the Privee Apple Shiden car that didn't even make it to the starting line but was able to fight back to an astounding finish in that it was able to finish in 7th. Of course the Lamborghinis are still having issues and yet again there was another Lamborghini on the side of the track after breaking down but it looked like the cars having the biggest issue this race were the two Lexus IS350s since both spent some time spinning off course and one could say that the Reckless IS350 was just a bit too reckless during this race. Still with the wreck in the last few laps the racing was called short due to the full course yellow.

To me it's interesting that there is so few multicar wrecks during the Super GT races considering how much traffic there is and how many twists and turns there are to navigate around. However that wasn't the case during the last few laps of this race as a handful of cars got into a banger of a mess. Since they didn't show a replay of the accident I can only speculate as to what happened during the wreck that involved the Autobacs Arta NSX, the Bomex 320R, the HASEMI GTR and I believe the Raybrig NSX the wreck was so bad that it send the driver of the Masemi GTR off in an ambulance. Since this was a pretty serious wreck it caused a full course caution and brought out the pace car. The race ended up being called under the full course yellow so the last couple of laps were rather boring and uneventful. You can find the official results of the race here.

With the second race in the bag for me I get to look forward to the release of the third race and hopefully I'll get to it before the next scheduled race in June. Once again I'm using an image taken by this guy and if you take a look at his sets you'll find a whole host of new images as well.

Another weekend err...Sunday of racing and picture/video taking. This time it was held out at the Idaho Center in Nampa. A nice sunny warm Sunday much better than the last event and it showed with I believe a much larger turn out of drivers. Since it was at the Idaho Center I was able to just hang out on the grass without the need of a spotter to film and take pictures. I also brought the umbrella setup along and thank goodness I did. I definitely think it did a lot to keep me out of the sun and a good couple of degrees cooler than just being out under the sun. It may look a little goofy but it rocks like nothing else.

What also rocks is the new camera car mount. I was a little worried to be honest as after attaching it to a car and letting it sit there for a while it seemed to lose just a bit of suction not a lot but enough to make me worry just a bit but all was good and it hung on for three outings on various cars. Oh course one of the videos got messed up some how so only got three on car videos. I did try hard to get at least one video of most of the cars that were out there some I just didn't care for but I'm trying to get every one's car more than just a lot of videos of a handful of cars.

I was also taking still pictures and trying to do the whole motion capture thing so the cars look like they are in motion and all that jazz. Still working on fine tuning that aspect of my photography. I also wasn't in the best place for pictures compared to videos. And speaking of places to be for being in a relatively safe place that black Dodge Neon with a major front end plow problem came damn close on one run.

It was a lot of fun as usual. I managed to hang around all day this time thanks to the umbrella and having the day off. Found out that a lot of people are watching the videos and really enjoy them, which is always a nice thing to hear. I still need to figure out a way to cut down on the wind noise from the on car videos and I think I'll be heading to a music store to look at mic covers. You can the pictures here and the videos are all here.

I missed a good number of spins but I also got a few good ones as well. Like this one from a Corvette engined Datsun 240Z. There was another great one from a Mercedes Benz as well where the driver was able to save it and keep going.

First car show of the year is always the Boise Roadster Show which was held on the Second weekend of March and while I have gone to it before I've passed going for several years due to the high volume of the same old same old year after year. This year my roommate's father entered his 65 Mustang and we got 4 day passes so decided to go this year since well I was bored and I heard there was a couple Porsche displays and a GTR. Then there was also the bikini contest. Figured what better way to break the winter doldrums and lack of any video postings than to film the bikini contest and take the 50mm lens out for a test drive.

We went on Friday evening pretty much to look about take some pictures and of course to film the bikini contest. You can read about that on the previous two posts. I found out that the 50mm lens doesn't work so well for car shows but the roommate did get some good shots of the girls with it while I was filming. So that means I had to go back on Saturday to shot the cars which wasn't too bad at all really.

I went back myself on Saturday morning and apparently so did everyone else. I got there soon after it was open for the day and the place was already packed. Of course that just makes it very hard to shot the cars with people standing in front of them talking and doing stupid people things. So yeah the cars. Actually it looked to me that there was a bit less turn out than the previous years that I've been to it. A sign of the times perhaps. I did check out the Silver GTR and it's HUGE and awesome in person. There was also a new Hyundai Genesis Coupe as well as a Nissan 370Z and while I've already seen the 370Z the Genesis coupe looks pretty nice in person as well.

As I'm a huge Porsche fan I was really looking forward to the Porsche display until I saw it and then the dealership display. Crappy displays both of them. The dealership which has a Porsche Design Cayman and a white 911 Turbo Cab at their dealership only brought a plain jane Boxster and a 911 C2 Cab. What in the piss, it's a car show bring the cool shit out for people to look at not the boring everyday things. They did have a Cayanne GTS but they've had that thing forever.

But it wasn't nearly as crappy as the Silver Sage Porsche club display. Remember them they do a show in October yeah well this display sucked and I took a picture of it to show how not to do a display. They had five cars crammed into a tiny space and had it roped off with stupid checkered triangles and the larger safety cones making it imposable to take any type of good picture since the rope was almost on top of cars. Really crappy display and the worst at the show by far. They didn't even mention anything about their own show in October what a way to pass up an opportunity to advertise. Not the worst looking cars though, no that goes to one of those god awful hideous 53 commemorative edition Corvettes sitting next to an overpriced new ZR-1 Corvette.

As for all the other stuff...well it wasn't half bad if you're into the trailer queened roadster and muscle car scene. I'm not so much but it was a good opportunity to take some more car show pictures and do something other than surf the Internet at home on a Saturday morning. I did like seeing the GTR finally and the bikini contest was also fun to watch. I'm definitely looking forward to the other car shows this year though. In the mean time you can find all the other pictures from the Roadster Show here.