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Open GT Championship &
Ferrari Challenge - 2009 Europe
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| My 1st podium finish of the season. 2nd place in Race 1 |
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06/29/09 Hojo Sunday Race Results at Spa
I got 5th place in yesterday's 50-minute race at Spa. I had a terrible start, actually last place after turn 2, but I finished 17th out of 28 cars overall and 5th in the GT3 class. No crashes and no rain except for the qualifying session so it was a great week in Belgium. The next race will most likely be at The World Famous Nurburgring circuit in Germany (they are changing the schedule) so book your tickets now!
Hojo
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| My car is back to normal, can't even tell they tore it apart just hours before. |
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06/27/09 Practice at Spa
We qualified in the rain this morning at 9 am and I was 9th in the GT3 class. Not my best performance but I didn't crash and was only off pace by a few tenths of a second. The second qualifying period went a bit better and I qualified 7th for Sunday's race.
The race went green with dry track conditions but looking gloomy. The rain held off for most of the 70 minute race, there were several crashes and cars off the track as usual but I finished the race 6th in the GT3 class, and 16th overall out of 28 cars on the grid. Not too bad!
We race again tomorrow at 1:30 pm so I will let you know how that goes.
Hojo
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| My car last night! |
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| Cars looking good, fast and clean! |
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06/26/09 Practice at Spa
We only had 2 one-hour practices today. The first session went fairly well. The second session did not, although I did get my best time ever. All hell broke lose early in the session; it looked like a bomb went off in our garage when the cars returned. Someone hit our teammate Marko in the side door panel taking out the right side of the GT2 car and I blew out my transmission in the GT3. Not good! We thought we were going to have to drive to Switzerland to get the new parts but at the last minute we got all of them together and began the re-build. That process took about 7 hours! We qualify tomorrow morning at 9 am so we are hoping we got all of the parts back in the right places!
Hojo
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| Finally, it arrives! |
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| All done! Don't ever let a body shop tell you it's difficult to install a new windshield. That took 4 minutes |
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| Our Buddy Vito's Pasta Sauce |
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| To Our Friends at Little Rock Pizzeria. Grazie! There is a Special Hojo Chicken Dish on the Menu Now! |
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| The New Hojo / Vittoria Hood Design |
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| Posing With My Scooter at the Coke Shack |
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| 06/23/09 Race Update from Belgium
What an interesting day and a half! I had a 10-hour flight from LA to London with a few hour lay over and then a short flight to Brussels.
I rented a car and drove for 3 hours trying to find my hotel (I got a little lost). Finally I found the team around 8 pm had dinner and went to bed around 11pm. Seven hours later we were headed to the track for my first time to Spa. And what a great track it is. It's in the middle of a huge forest with huge sweeping turns, lots of elevation changes and the sun was out. It's a 7 km long track so it takes me about 2'33 sec per lap and I drove about 450 km today. All of this since I left he comforts of Los Angeles Sunday evening.
Things are looking good for a fun race weekend. Now a few days of prep work and we will start the official racing with Friday practice then 2 qualifying sessions and a 70-minute race Saturday followed by a 50-minute race Sunday. Then it’s back to London! Great start for round 3 of the Championship!
Hojo
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(06/08/09) My new carbon fiber doors!!
One door is only 2.8 kg the old door was 18 kg!!! Now I will Fly!
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05/17/09 HoJo Final Result from Portugal
I qualified for todays race in 5th position. Due to some European regulations in this series I was assessed several penalties or "handicaps" as they put it. Each team is required to make a 60 second pit stop during the race, most of which switch drivers during that time. Since I do not change drivers they penalize me an extra 10 seconds longer in the pit stop. In addition to that, since I placed 2nd in yesterday's race they penalized or handicapped me another 10 seconds in the pit stop for a total of 80 seconds. The other teams only had to stay in the pit for 60 seconds.
I finished the race in 5th position and just 22 seconds behind 3rd place so the handicaps really are effective! It doesn't seem quite right to penalize a driver for enduring the entire race alone and then penalize again for doing well with a podium finish, but those are the rules and that's what we dealt with. Overall we are very happy with the weekend results. My teammates Plamen and Andrea sharing the Ferrari GT2 finished 7th in Saturday's race and 9th in today's race. No damage to the cars and everyone is in great spirits. We will now start to train for arguably the most difficult, fast track on the circuit at SPA in Belgium. I believe we hit a blind, uphill, twisting turn flat out at 225 km / hr. I'm not exactly sure how to prepare for that but we WILL be prepared and we are very much looking forward to the next race. We are making our way back home to Italy now so another couple of long days but great fun!!!!
Hojo
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| All of the necessary equipment for a great race weekend! |
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| Minor damage from car # 62 who tried to take me out! I didn't see him on the Podium. |
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| The winning combination |
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05/16/09 HoJo Takes 2nd Place in Portugal!
We had a very long day today. We qualified for the first race at 9 am this morning then qualified for Sunday's race at 1 pm with the 70 minute race at 5 pm. All today! For both sessions I qualified in 5th position. After a chaotic and long race I finished in 2nd place today for round 2 of the International GT Championship. The team was ecstatic and I am very pleased to be back on the podium in only my second race in the Ferrari GT car. The other two teams had 2 drivers who split the race time so they each received a trophy. I am driving the entire race myself so I got both of the trophies. After a while an official tracked us down and said that I could only have 1 trophy since I was the only driver. We called bullshit, and pointed out that I worked twice as hard as the rest of them and deserved both awards.
They conceded! Great day and I'm very proud for the whole team!
Hojo
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| 05/15/09 Friday Free Practice Update from Portugal
We had a great practice today and will qualify in the morning for the 70 minute race tomorrow afternoon. Then a 50 minute race on Sunday.
Live TV coverage all over Europe, we've seen commercials for it. Very cool race series and much more aggressive. I am not only the only American driver but I am also the only single driver. All of the other teams share a car with 2 drivers, so each one only races for half of the time and one of them is usually a professional driver!
Its tough over here! I was running 6th today and hope to do better tomorrow in qualifying!
Hojo
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05/08/09 Parma Karting Club
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| Parma Karting Entrance |
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| Tire Cemetary |
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| Roberto givin' it Hell in the Hojo Kart |
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| A little Engine Maintenance Issue, Which was Corrected. |
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| Obviously a Fast Kart! |
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| We Used the Tires to Their Full Extent! Chunks of Rubber started coming off. |
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05/01/09 Parma Karting Club
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| Karting1 - Roberto and Hojo getting ready to test the new Karts |
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| The Friday race team |
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| Roberto and Hojo going over some telemetry from a test session |
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| Track bound |
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| Hojo drafting Roberto, almost! |
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| Head to Head |
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