MONTEREY, Calif. -- Yesterday marked the halfway point for the 15th Annual Skip Barber Karting Scholarship Shootout and the Skip Barber Race Series Champion Shootout. Split into three groups, the racers spent their first session of the day in the usual fashion, getting acclimated to the track and improving on the previous day’s lap times. After lunch, the racers were thrown a slight curveball. Instead of just practicing on track for their second session of the day, they were organized to race in a competitive module, with two warm up laps and 10 green flag laps. Designed to evaluate the each racer’s adaptability, judgment, competitive nature, the competitive module, the competitive module allowed judges to get a glimpse of what areas each racer excelled in and could use improvement. “It’s a really good tool to see each racer’s performance,” said Race Series Champion Shootout participant Danilo Estrela. Max DiBella, like most of the karters was surprised and nervous. “It added a lot of pressure,” he said. “But it was really useful. It was the first time most of us ever raced wheel to wheel. It gave us great experience of racing in a car.”

The competitive modules where not designed on a winner-takes-all basis, but strictly another tool for evaluation. Time sheets for the competitive modules can be found here.

Today, racers will attend a sponsorship seminar by IZOD IndyCar driver Townsend Bell before heading on track for at least one more session before deliberations begin. If the expert panel feels the need to add another round of on track session, then the scholarship announcements will take place this afternoon.

Follow the action all season long on twitter.com/SkipBarberNatl and on skipbarber.com.