Texas Biggie: Cupps TQ’s And Wins For Serpent
Report By Jeremy Cupps
This year was the 33rd year for the Texas Biggie, we had great weather great people and most important some good racing! The biggie format is a fun one we run a total of six qualifiers, 2 on Friday 4 on Saturday, and the mains on Sunday. Well Fridays qualifiers started I was on a good pace and ended 2nd after the first run, I was happy with the run but knew I could go faster. The 2nd run went like the first, i improved my time but was still 2nd on the grid. After the first day of qualifying I was happy with the performance of my car, the 966 was very easy to drive, after securing a spot in the final I was preparing to go after the TQ for Saturday.
Saturdays qualifiers started, and more drivers showed up, now most all of the fast people were at the track. But we had rain on Friday night so all the rubber was washed off, in practice we were all a half a second off our times from the day before, so I knew TQ was going to be hard to come by. Sure enough the first few qualifiers were a wash, no one improved, and the race director had to cut out one qualifier, so we only had one left before the end of the day. Before the start I had been in contact with Paolo for some advice on a gearing change, he told me what he thought I should do and it worked, I put in the fastest run of the weekend, So now the Serpent 966 was Top Qualifier!
In the main I was going without a tyre change as I knew a few other drivers would have to, so at the start a was a little off pace but held first for about 2 minutes, holding up the following cars long enough for my tyres to come in. For the next 20 to 25 minutes the first four cars were separated by a few seconds and at about 25 minutes I was in the lead with about a 11 second gap! At this point I put it in cruise mode just hitting my marks and staying out of trouble. With about 3 minutes left my lead was down to 4 seconds and the 2nd place car was pushing really hard to make up the time, but he had used up his tyres in the process, and I held on for the win!
This was the fourth year in a row that I have won the Biggie, and this one was more gratifying than any before, I put a lot of hard work in to this race and it paid off in the end. I would like to thank my pit man Bob Ingersoll and his wife Jane for the pit work. A big thanks to Paolo Morganti for all your help and thank you Serpent America, Byron Fuels, Airtronics for all your help!
Source: Serpent
