So we clearly had a much better run last week. It's been a long time coming. I can't even tell you the last time I was our car number on the leaderboard.
It's a crazy feeling just looking at that photo, seeing your number on the board. I've spent so many years just trying to survive, keep my car on the track, doing everything I could just to keep running. To see that number on the leaderboard does something to you, there's pride there, there's a sense of accomplishment. It's almost like justification for all the hours spent just trying to tread water. It's a moment of relief, a breath of air. I can't tell you how good it felt to see it.
We had a good run in that first Main Event. I was feeling fairly confident for the second one, but knew my car wasn't great. It was kind of one of those "Let's just make the best of what we have" moments. I knew it wasn't "right", but I knew it was drivable, predictable. Going back over video you get that "hindsight is 20/20" moment and realize all the things you did wrong. I got into the 3 car on about lap 2 and most likely knocked the toe out of adjustment, that may have impacted the handling and caused us to miss a top-5 in that second race. These things happen. If you aren't pushing the limit, you aren't racing. I'd like to think I finally did some "racing" last weekend.
So where do we go from here? Well, we've got a couple weeks off before our next race. Finally getting through a race night without major damage means we can spend some time getting the car better instead of constantly rebuilding it, so that's good. We got a lot of notes, finally, so we'll start digging through them and figure out what we need to do. I'll give Jim a call at Race Car Help too and talk with him. Luckily, he puts up with my nonsense. 😉
I also need to take some time to celebrate the small victories. We rambled off a 3rd place finish in that first race, that counts as a podium in my book. No, we don't get a trophy for it, but it's still a podium finish. Let's take a moment to celebrate that, it's been a long time coming. And, we managed to hang on to a hard fought 6th place in that second race too. Let's go ahead and chalk that up to a top-10. I know, it's not "great", but it also wasn't horrible either. So two top-10s in one night, one of them being a podium finish. That's a hell of a run for a bunch of guys who literally loaded their car in the trailer off the back of a tow truck at the last race.
The one other thing I want to smile about is that we jumped from 12th in the points all the way up to 7th. Granted, I lost ground on the leader, we're now 81 points behind him compared to just 63 at the last event. But let's be honest, the odds of catching him were pretty slim to begin with. Those fast guys are really fast. You can't afford to have a night like we had on opening night. But, on the flip side, we could have been 5th right now or something like that instead of 7th. The other thing is, we gained a net 0 points on the other rookie that we're chasing. So we're still not looking good there. After looking over the points, I think we actually have two other rookies this year, so three of us fighting for this one. that other rookie is also in front of me, but only by 8 points at the moment. We gained a lot of ground on him last weekend. But we're still way back, and it's hard to make up large amounts of points when they are also collecting points too.
This weekend my niece makes her debut in the Mini Stock, I'll be spotting for her. So we take a week off from the #68 car and focus on her. We'll regroup after that. I'm looking forward to a good weekend in the spotter's tower. 😎