Sonoma, CA—Driver Viêt-Tâm Luu successfully completed two races this past weekend at the SCCA San Francisco Region's first regional race event of 2008 at Infineon Raceway (Sears Point) in Sonoma, California.

Tâm did a full day of testing and practice on Friday, March 28, to reacquaint himself with the racetrack and the newly-rebuilt Extreme Performance-sponsored #14 Spec Miata race car. Unfamiliarilty with both the track and the race car resulted in modest qualifying results on Saturday: 56th out of 62 in the combined Spec Miata (48th out of 53 in SMT) class and 36th out of 50 in the combined Improved Touring session (5th out of 5 in ITS).

"Considering that the car is new to me, and it's only my second time at Infineon, and given what happened the last time I was here, I'm not too surprised to be far off the pace. I've learned to have a healthy dose of respect for this track and am approaching it conservatively," said Tâm, referring to the October 2006 incident where he wrecked his Mitsubishi Evo race car at the same track.

In Sunday's races, Tâm drove conservatively, aiming to achieve an incident-free race to fulfill the requirements of his SCCA Novice race license. During the incident and attrition-filled Spec Miata race, Tâm profited from numerous retirements in front of him to finish 53rd out of a combined field of 64 cars.

"Shortly after the restart the rear end of the car got really loose, and every time it stepped out only made the problem worse," said Tâm of the race. "I could catch up to the car ahead of me but every time I tried to overtake on the inside line, I'd find myself sideways and having to abort the attempt."

During the later ITS race, Tâm suffered an on-track spin halfway through the race that cost him a few positions; fuel instrumentation issues forced him to drive more slowly for the rest of the race, holding 35th place through the finish just ahead of James Ghilardi's #74 Volvo.

"I thought I could take a wider entry into Turn 6 and get on the throttle earlier but either I encountered the same oversteer issue as before, or hit some slippery patch outside the usual racing line, or simply drove it wrong, and I ended up spinning down the Carousel. I was able to make up some ground to the cars ahead of me... Then I looked at the fuel gauge and it was pegged on 'E'. I didn't want to risk running out of fuel so I backed off the pace so I could finish the race. After the race I found out the fuel gauge was completely inaccurate and I had plenty of fuel left."

Nevertheless, Tâm was satisfied with the weekend's results, having completed both races without any major incident and without sustaining any damage to the car.

"I was hoping for a better result, but I accomplished what I set out to do, I learned a lot and I can't wait to put it to use at Laguna in two weeks."

Viêt-Tâm Luu's next race will be at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Salinas, CA, April 12-13.