Yesterday was the first race day of the year, and right from the start we had bad luck. The first thing that happened in the series of events that had us finish 14th was when I went to change into my drivers suit. I had my arms full of my drivers suit and nomex underwear and I was trying to lock the bathroom door when I dipped my nomex pants into the toilet water. Ick so I didn't get to wear those.
It was raining on and off all day and we were lined up to go out for practice when it began to rain. We were parked beside a 2 foot hot pit wall and when we started to roll out the pit lady stepped out in front of me to stop me. I was going too fast to stop and from the drivers compartment can't see the 2 foot wall, I swerved and smashed into it. Next time someone steps out in front of me I have decided I will just hit them, they are softer than the walls. The damage incurred from that was a bent rim, bent spindle, bent ball joint, tore the brake lines off, and knocked the toe out. Because of the lengthy repairs on that we missed all practice and went into qualifying blind.
As we rolled over tech before qualifying we didn't meet ride height rules and the tech official actually said that he thought there was a bump where we were checking ride heights because a few cars hadn't met the height rule on the left side and where high on the right. Very professional tech the ride heights on a bump. So we had only a few minutes to make it legal and frantically wound down on the springs. I went out for qualifying and barreled the car down into the 1/2 corner and quickly realized that all our winding to make the car make ride height had tightened the car up astronomically. I had to wait on the throttle for what seemed like minutes and my first lap was a 19.8 which is over a second off the pace. Once I realized what the car was doing I was able to compensate and pull off a 19.2 which landed us mid pack. A frustrating run though considering we were faster than that the week before in practice.
The heat race was the only silver lining to the day, I started right at the back and was able to pick off cars and work my way through the pack to a 3rd place finish. I was definitely faster than the two cars in front of me but because of the push I had off the corner I could creep under them on entry but couldn't hold it down enough to pull off the pass.
In the main event the invert had me starting behind all the fastest cars right at the back of the field of 20 cars. On lap 2 there was a huge pile up 7 cars scattered across the track on the back straightaway and I am proud of myself I did some pretty fancy driving to avoid all those cars. I turned hard left then hit the gas and slid the rear end around to the right to avoid the huge mess of cars and come through unscathed. By lap 20 I had moved my way up to 7th spot and the car was absolutely flying. I was making a pass on the outside of #38 (a geriatric ran out of talent driver who clearly forgot to take his Geritol that morning) and I had his door coming up off the 1/2 corner. He drove up to the wall as if no one was there, luckily I was on the wheel last night and kept my car off the outside wall but he cut down my left front tire. I drove into the 3/4 and knew something was wrong and limped it around the track and into my hot pit stall. The sway bar drug on the track and made a spark show about 50 feet out the back of the car! We did a speedy tire change and Ive never slammed through the gears faster than to get back out on th race track and only lose 2 laps. After we put our old tire on the left front the car developed a push off the corner and the further the race went the worse it got. I finished the race in 14 position and brought the car home in one piece which is something to be said with all the carnage last night. Four race cars went home needing to be clipped, and many more had body panels hanging and torn off.
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