E D O M O T O R S P O R T S
Race Report: Buttonwillow Race Park, April 2008

The 3^rd round of the Honda Challenge series brought us to Buttonwillow Race Park in central California. Edo Motorsports brought their #78 Acura Integra, piloted by Edik Stepanyan, to compete in H4 and try to cut down the Championship lead gap between 1^st place James Landry and Edik. The point gap is currently at 48 points after 4 races.

Edomoto would like to welcome 2 new sponsors who joined after the California Speedway event in March: JE Pistons and Motul.

Saturday:

The qualifying session was cut short as the Jeff “Kiwi” Owen’s H1 Integra spilled oil in the middle of Talladega and caused several cars to spin out. Edik was able to save the car from collecting Jeff who was stopped off track. In the next turn though, Edik went off due to the oil on the tires and damaged the splitter. He was still able qualified in 4th place out of 11 cars with a 2:06.057 lap time. John Howard qualified in 1^st with a 2:05.848. James and Terri Rossi fell into 2^nd and 3^rd. In H2, Renan Bayar qualified first with Jeff and Greg Neuwirth behind him. The splitter was repaired and ready for the race.

Edik was able to get an excellent start and got by Terri, James and Renan to take over 2^nd place behind John Howard. During the second lap Edik made a clean pass coming out of the Buttonhook turn and held onto the lead. Michael Lee started from the back of the pack in H1 and spilled some fluid coming out of Talladega which caused several cars to get a little sideways. Edik swapped the overall HC lead several times with Renan finishing overall and taking the H2 win. Edik held brought the car to the finish line finishing 2^nd overall and 1^st in H4. James finished in 2^nd place with Terri in 3^rd by less than one second.

Sunday:

Sunday’s qualifying session went better for Edik as he qualified in 2nd place with a 2:03.337 lap time behind Manny Coats who ran a 2:03.218 with Terri in 3rd. Renan qualifed in 1^st again with Greg in 2^nd. Another great start by Edik put the EdoMoto Integra in first place in the first turn of the race. Edik built a safe lead in H4 and was in front of Michael and Renan for the overall lead. They both made the pass to get in front of Edik. Renan developed a problem and DNF’d with several laps remaining. This gave Greg the win in the H2 class and Michael crossed the finish line to take 1^st place in H1.

Edik cut down the gap between James Landry and himself from 48 points to 23 points in the Championship by winning both days.

We’d like to thank several people who helped us out throughout our busy weekend: Hovsep(Joe), Souren and Tigran.

Thanks to our sponsors for helping us make the events: Hondata, Speedvision motorsports, JE Pistons, Motul, Mirage Auto Body, Sav-On driving & Traffic School, 5Zigen, and Mfactory. http://edomoto.com/sponsors.html

The pictures of the race weekend are here: http://edomoto.com/images.html