This weekend sure felt like a roller coaster ride.  There was lots of excitement and anticipation for settling in for the first pro race of the season.  Road Atlanta was a great course for the season opener.  We campaigned our Zetec and our customer Glennon Reidler's  Gold Cup entry.  For this event, we had a last minute driver change.  Cole Morgan, just 16 years old, made his pro racing debut.  His first race ever was just last summer and he promptly trounced the Formula Continental field in the SCCA club event.  Finishing P8 in Race 1 and running P7 for most of Race 2 before a spin in his first Pro event is very encouraging.  Cole will be a driver to watch in whatever he is piloting. Our Gold Cup driver Glennon Reidler had a good car all weekend and was running P4 in Race 1 before spinning and being hit broadside at the entrance to Turn 7.  Glennon was taken to the hospital with a possible concussion and injury to his right leg.  Fortunately, Glennon was released but not cleared to drive in Race 2.   Cole has a recap of the weekend below.  Glennon's race recaps will start following the May Mid Ohio rounds   --- Craig Vogeley

COLE MORGAN:
After finding out Tuesday afternoon that I was going to be running my first Cooper Tires Zetec Pro Series race with 10/TENTHS Motorsport I was ecstatic.  On Thursday morning I couldn’t wait to get fitted in the car and go.  In my first session in a Zetec and a Van Diemen chassis, I was having trouble shifting due to my left foot braking technique.  After running 6 laps, I built up my confidence and started to push the car a little harder.  This resulted in me getting a slight oversteer in Turn 1, which ultimately resulted in me spinning and stopping short of the outside wall by only about 5 feet.  I couldn’t get the car to start up again and decided to get out and wait for next session to continue.  After standing behind the wall for 2 laps another driver did exactly the same thing I did in Turn 1 and ended up making contact with my car.  Luckily the damage wasn’t too bad, only some fiberglass and a radiator, or so I thought.  I also lost my electronic dashboard telling me RPM’s and water temperature.  What I didn’t know was that the car was running that whole session with the water temperature around 240 degrees.  After losing much of the remainder of our test day to an engine change, I went out for the last session.  I was still having trouble with the shifting and things were not looking good.  Saturday morning everyone was ready for a better day, and with it being my first real full session I had in the car, we were hoping for the best.  We’ll it wasn’t until qualifying that I got my shifting down and we ended up qualifying 11^th with the next 6 cars in front of me within only 0.6 seconds!  It was a much needed change of pace and everyone was pleased.  Come time for Race 1, I was a little nervous but mostly excited for my first Pro race.  I waited for the carnage of Turn 1, but it didn’t happen until Turn 3 when someone ahead of me went off and a cone knocked my left side mirror off.  Race 1 was full of wrecked cars everywhere and about lap 11 my car started having a bad oversteer.  I started driving easier and luckily a full course yellow flag gave me a change to gather my thoughts and cool down.  The race ended under full course caution and I was happy because I had saved the car for Sunday’s race and ended up with a very pleasing 8^th place finish.  Craig and Bill Vogeley worked wonders on the car with the help of James Lee and a weekend that started out looking bad was soon looking very good.  Come Sunday we were all very eager to get the race going, I knew there was some speed left on the track after talking to Justin Ulland.  He was a huge help this weekend and with his data analysis I could see where I was losing time on the track and I was determined to find it.  At the start going into Turn 1 all I could see was smoke and then a car sideways spinning in the middle of the track.  I tapped the car in front of me but luckily didn’t do any damage to the car.  Only a few laps into the race I was up to 7^th place. I was just pacing myself and catching the car in front of me with about a 1.5 second gap between us.  Then, after the track started becoming a little bit slicker, the car developed a huge oversteer.  I had 2 choices, keep driving 1 or 2 seconds off the pace and finish around mid-field, or push the car and risk spinning out.  Well unfortunately I pushed the car a little too hard and spun out going from 7^th to 23^rd  place.  I still had enough left in the car to make up a few positions finishing 20^th.  I was disappointed.  Even though I received encouraging words back at the trailer, I wished I could have brought back a better result for the team since they all worked so hard to get this car on the track with me in it under such short notice.  I have to give a huge thanks to 10/TENTHS Motorsport.  They are a great team to work with and truly operate on a Pro racing level.  The Cooper Tires Formula Ford Zetec Series is the greatest series for young drivers I have seen to date, and I hopefully will be able to participate in more races this year and next year with 10/TENTHS Motorsport.