What a great racetrack is the first thing I can say about Road America. Unfortunately, as a driver, you’re never totally satisfied when you don’t get a victory knowing you have the tools and capabilities to do so.
Qualifying was my issue, I kept trying to time a lap to get a good run in and something always kept popping up which hurt my run. Should have been more aggressive this session, but I definitely learned from it! Qualified in 5th position.
In Race 1 I had a great battle going in the lead pack. Unfortunately, a driver who had already made contact but failed to take his safety check for 6 successive laps was doing what seemed like everything in his power to cause a collision and take the rest of the field out. It was pretty frustrating as the battling caused us to lose the draft to the top group of cars. On track I ended up finishing in 4th position. However, 2 penalties in front of me were assessed and I was promoted to 2nd position. Some might call it lucky, but I was still pretty frustrated I wasn’t able to fight for victory head-to-head.
For Race 2 on Sunday, I was starting on the outside of the front row. Everything was going well as I came out of Turn 1 where I started and was having a decent run on the track. It was all for naught though as another driver completely misjudged the brake zone into the famous Canada corner and hit me from behind as I was running P2. This brought out the full course caution but I was forced to pit from P2 since there was contact. It’s the rules and there’s nothing I can do even though my car was virtually undamaged, so I dropped to the back of the grid (16th) for the restart. I had a great restart and moved up quite a few positions. However, another caution came out immediately so 3 of our 9 laps were under caution. With the track being 4 miles long, those cautions really took a while and left me with less time to move up in the race. The final restart only gave me 3 laps to move up in the field. Overall I moved up and finished the race in 6th with some bad luck not to catch the top group. I also managed to set the fastest lap of the race which was bittersweet in the end.
The racing was crazy and there was a lot of contact and close calls all over. I feel bad for the Skip Barber staff who had to sort out the penalties throughout the event! I appreciate their efforts to make the racing as fair as possible, it’s such a close race with groups of up to 10 cars running nose to tail.
I should have more exciting news soon, stay tuned!
