That wrapped up Thursday and set us up for race day on Friday. Unfortunately, like most other things that happened, things did not go according to plan.
The culprit this time was Mother Nature. Rain was expected pretty much all day at Lucas Oil Raceway and there was a very slim chance we’d be able to get any racing in, let alone all the racing that was scheduled.
However, against a lot of people’s expectations we actually got a span of time with no rain, managed to dry the track, and ended up being able to practice and qualify the Silver Crown cars and midgets.
I qualified ninth out of 24 cars for the Silver Crown race, improving on my practice time where I was 11th. I was very happy with this and Davey Hamilton and the team at Davey Hamilton Racing were very happy with that. The car felt great and I was excited to make my Silver Crown debut.
It was very challenging going form the Silver Crown car to the midget. I was worried about overdrive the midget and make any stupid mistakes, so I ended up qualifying 21st out a field of 25 or 26 cars.
That was as far as we got Friday as rain postponed the balance of the program until Saturday.
First up Saturday was the Silver Crown race. Instead of starting ninth where I qualified, I started seventh after two guys ahead of me wiped out their cars during qualifying and couldn’t race.
The start of the race was pretty good for me and I decided to settle into a pace and rhythm that I could maintain, but that didn’t last very long. Coming out of turn four Eric Gordon ran into my left-rear tire.
I tried to save the car from spinning by counter steering to the right, but by then it was already too late. The car snapped around to the left, the left-rear wheel dug into the pavement and the car flipped, eventually landing right-side up and doing a full 360 spin before coming to rest.
I was fine, but that was the first time I’d flipped a car. I certainly didn’t expect it to happen in a Silver Crown car on pavement, but it happened. I was pretty frustrated about my race getting cut 95 laps short.
There wasn’t time to linger on the crash, I had to get ready for the USF2000 race. There was good and bad in the USF2000 race. The good was I finished the entire race and learned a lot about racing a formula car on an oval. The bad was I could not make up any positions during the race because the car was very tight.
The corner entry was very stable and confident, but I couldn’t get on the power early and hard enough on the mid-corner or exit phase of the turns to make up ground and get a run on people ahead of me. In the end, I finished where I started, in 21st.
Finally we had the midget race. The midget race was right after the USF2000 race. I wasn’t terribly exhausted after the USF2000 race like I was expecting, but I was definitely physically worn out.
Luckily, there was a slight reprieve period between the races where I could catch my breath and relax my arms, but it was go-time shortly thereafter. I hopped in the midget, fired it up, got it up to temperature during the warm-up pacing laps and waited for the green flag to wave.
When it did, I had a pretty good start, but I was mainly focused on getting as comfortable and up to speed as fast as possible. On Friday during practice and qualifying, I was way over slowing the car on corner entry after just qualifying the Silver Crown car because in the Silver Crown car the braking for the turn is much sooner.
However, because the midget is significantly lighter, it can brake and get down to cornering speed much quicker. I still hadn’t quite figured out when, how much, and how long I needed to brake in the midget, so I was in a position where I was trying to adapt as quickly as possible at the start of the race.
I was just starting to get into a rhythm when a caution flag came out. Just as I needed to slow down for the caution my brakes started to lose functionality. I pumped the brakes a few times to get the car slowed and that seemed to work.
However, during the caution laps I could feel the brake functionality slowly but surely slipping away. Resistance from the brakes eventually completely went away and it was the lap before the green flag waved again where I signaled to my crew about the problem and came into the pits for the final time that day.
And that was it, my race was done.
As my first attempt at a tripleheader race weekend, I felt like I did fairly well. I qualified very good in the Crown car, I adapted and overcame in the USF2000 car and I quickly learned and adjusted in the midget.
However, the results weren’t good and in both the Silver Crown race and midget race I lost out on valuable racing experience and laps, not to mention good finishes. I learned a lot in the USF2000 car and still have a lot more to learn.
Out of the 205 planned race laps I only got 85, which is definitely less than ideal. But on the bright side, I got some pretty nice footage of flipping a Silver Crown car, so the weekend wasn’t too bad.