Can I just start off by saying, what a great photo from Kenny over at Just KB Media. Man, what a shot, dude does some incredible work! Go check him out - https://justkb.com/
What a roller-coaster of a day. For those who haven't followed along, or read my last blog post (I'm guessing you haven't because it had a record low view count, only 5 of you read it), we had a massive pile of repairs to make after going airborne in the last race. We spent a very long weekend in the shop making those repairs and my guys did an amazing job. We felt confident that we had it under control. But, I wanted to make sure we got out in the first session just to make damn sure we were good to go. As luck would have it, we were not. 😕
It took just 4 laps to be black flagged due to a massive oil leak that we missed back at the shop. Race cars are funny things. You can work on them at the shop and fire up the engine and do all those things and they can seem just fine. But the minute you put them on the track, with the load placed on the engine and the stresses placed on everything and the g-forces of the corners, you suddenly get a completely different picture. We've chased electrical gremlins for weeks on past race cars that simply didn't show up at the shop, they only happened at the track. Things are different out there, it's not as simple as just "work on it at the shop". This was one of those cases, this oil leak wasn't there at the shop. But the g-forces of the corners revealed it.
The guys went to work to fix it, but it involved some silicone sealant, which needs time to set up before you move on. Thus, we ended up sitting out all of the rest of practice right up to the very last session. We debated skipping that one too, but I wanted to make sure we weren't too far out on the setup and make sure we had the leak under control. This was starting to look like a very frustrating night. Luckily, that final practice session showed that the guys had done a great job of fixing it. Huge thanks to the crew, they just never give up and continue to pull me through, week after week. 😎
On the plus side, we could now go racing. On the flip side, the car wasn't great. We qualified 6th, almost a full 4/10ths off the fast time. That's closing in on half a second slower than the fast time, that's a huge gap. The other thing I've been noticing is that our car has been right around that 15.3 second time most of the season. Fast time seems to vary from 14.9 to 15.1, depending on track conditions. But our car seems to be stuck in that 15.3 window, no matter what adjustments we make to it. That has been frustrating me, because I'm not sure why we can't make it faster. As we head into the end of the season, the track has been getting faster as the weather cools down, but we're not getting faster. Regardless, it was time to set that aside and get to work for these races.
The heat race found me lined up outside of the front row, with Eric Lee in the 18L on the pole. I really wanted to just have a nice clean race and get this one out of the way. Nothing ever goes as planned. I wasn't fast enough to jump Eric on the start, his car has such a massive engine in it, just so much horsepower in that thing! I was lucky enough to get cleared by my spotter and fall in behind him in 2nd place. I'm not sure who was behind me, but whoever it was they were clearly faster than me because just about every corner I was getting drilled in the rear bumper. I knew I wasn't fast enough to do anything with Eric, so you're playing defense here and trying to just protect 2nd place and get those points. I was also trying my best to stay off Eric, because frankly, I don't need to be slamming him and making him think I'm trying to wreck him. But when you're getting drilled every corner and shoved into him, it's hard to stay off him. I know I gave him a couple really hard shots. But let me tell you, I took some seriously hard shots because I was hard on the brakes trying not to run into Eric. In the end, I came home in 2nd place in that one. So a good points moment, but Eric is in front of me in the points too so finishing behind him doesn't help.
We lined up 7th for the main event, so inside row 4. Not a bad place to be, there's some slow stuff up front but we should be okay here. At the green flag, the inside row really started to freight train the outside row. So you just kind of take it easy and follow those guys by the outside line and before I knew it we were in 4th. Brian in the 27 car was out front, kind of running off from us, because Bob Monroe in the 19 was in 2nd and George Chambers in the 24 was 3rd. George was clearly faster than Bob and he was kind of using him up. But behind George, I was way faster than him and once again taking huge shots to the rear bumper because I'm hard on the brakes trying to stay off George. Racing, isn't it fun? Heading into turn 3 at some point George really got into Bob pretty good and the two of them got pretty sideways and slid up the track some. When that happened, I cut hard under them and wicked it up, squirting out of turn 4 in 2nd place. Luckily no yellow came out so I knew they didn't fully wreck behind me. By this time Brian was way out front, more than a straightaway lead on me. But, I settled in and started trying to run him down.
I could see that I was gaining on him, and I was trying to just be smooth and hit my marks. I reeled him in to about a half a straightaway lead when it all happened. I was coming off turn 4 and could see Brian right at the flag stand when his engine let go. just a huge cloud of smoke, at one point I completely lost sight of his car in there and then when I regained sight of him he was completely sideways across the track and sliding backwards towards the turn 1 wall. This is always a scary moment, because you know you're setting your car in on a massive oil slick. By the time you start to react, you're already full throttle and carrying a pretty good head of steam. I knew the brakes would be a bad idea, because as soon as you touch them, you're just along for the ride. I managed to kind of pitch it in and drift around the corner, catching it at the apex and coming out of turn 2 with the car under me. I knew the guys behind me wouldn't be so lucky, because I had a good view of it, I knew what was coming. They had a view of my car, they had little warning. So of course, it was no surprise to hear my spotter say " Several cars in the wall in turn 1, caution, caution."
When we came back around I saw Logan Cole buried in the wall and his tire laying down in the dirt on the inside of the corner. Brian had let his car roll down to the inside of turn 2 and was sitting there. There was oil everywhere. They brought us back around to the exit of turn 4 and red flagged the race. It took a really long time to clean up the wreck and the oil. There was speedy dry all over the place, from the finish line all the way to the exit of turn 2. Then they started moving cars out of the way, because Bob Monroe in the 19 car had left his engine running the whole time and it overheated and started dumping water all over the track in turn 4. So now they had another mess to clean up there and more speedy dry. So now you've got speedy dry from turn 4 all the way to turn 2. just a massive amount of speedy dry. They also shortened our race to 25 laps, so I inherited the lead due to Brian's blown engine, with just 9 laps to my first win.
I knew there was some fast stuff behind me, but I had high hopes for maybe pulling this one off. They went with a single-file restart due to all the speedy dry everywhere, so I was fully in control of this one and got a decent restart. Tommy was awesome on the radio just keeping me focused and giving me info. I'm telling you, he is an amazing spotter. But, as hard as I tried, I just couldn't hold off Devin Eierman. I think it was with just 4 laps to go that he got a super good run off turn 4 and got under me heading into turn 1. It's at those times that you have to make a decision, do I try to chop him or do I leave him space? You can try to chop him, and take the risk of both of you getting spun. Mostly likely you will be the one getting spun and he will continue on. The inside car generally wins that battle. Or you leave him space and surrender the position. Do I want to surrender the position when I'm facing my first win? No. But I also need to finish this race, because points are points and 2nd isn't bad. Well, 2nd would have been good, but Dominic Hunter had other ideas and he glued that 18 car to Devin's back bumper, leaving me no room to get back in line while he motored under me too. Well played man, well played. 😉 I dropped in behind Dominic in 3rd place and managed to ride this one out to the checkered flag and bring it home in 3rd. It's not a bad day, it's good points and it'll help our cause. But man am I bummed that one got away from me. It sucks where you're literally 4 or 5 laps from glory and it slips away like that. We still have some work to do, but we've only got one shot left. I'm not sure we're gonna get there, but there's no way we're giving up just yet. We've got one last chance to close this season out, we're gonna give it everything we've got. 😎