In my morning run, I felt out the course, trying to find my turn-in for the long sweeper in the infield. The rest of the course came pretty naturally, but the start line was on the straight of the oval, so the first time I would go through Turn 1 into the infield, would be on my start lap. Eric VanCleef started in front of me in the Subaru STi. He made a hard, smoky launch, which I would later find had broken his LR axle. From a standing start, it wasn’t a problem to get through Turn 1 for me. As I approached Turns 3 and 4, I saw the spectators waving their hands at me. I breathed off the throttle for just a split second as I turned my eyes back down the track, but could not see any obstacle. I stayed in it as I saw a yellow flag ahead. I was able to spot the Subaru off the track to the left and, since it wasn’t in my way, didn’t slow in the slightest. I did, however, feel very bad for Eric, thinking at that time that he may have had an impact.
The car was a bit loose in the last turn leading onto the oval, but it was controllable. Accelerating toward the banked NASCAR turn, I short-shifted by a few hundred rpm into 4th gear so that I wouldn’t have to up-shift in the turn. I could definitely feel the rear wing doing its job through the banking, as the car transitioned to a push in the ~110 mph turn. The car pulled to about 140mph before slowing it for Turn 1. The transition was awkward and tossed the car around. I had opted to over-brake before the turn and coast, or even accelerate slightly, through the turn in the name of safety for my first time by. I repeated my laps, tweaking my line in the banked turn and backing up my braking points a bit, bringing it home cleanly. With the Subaru broken, it turned out to be good enough for a 5th place finish.
In the afternoon run, I pushed a bit harder. I attacked the infield harder, floating corner to corner, even nicking the monstrous curbs a bit. I carried more speed through Turn 1, delaying more braking and my downshift to 3rd until before Turn 2. On my first time through, I trailed a bit too much brake into Turn 2, and the car went into a big slide. I held onto the drift like Initial D and came out with as much speed as I could, but that certainly isn’t the fast way around a turn. Worse yet, I don’t think there were even any cameras focused on that corner! I had been finding the car to be a bit loose on the first lap of each session, so this shouldn’t have surprised me. I finished off my run to repeat my 5th place morning performance and advance to 8th overall!
On our way to Mid-Ohio, we were caravanning with Neil Simon / Woody Hair and Robin Sparrow / Brian Hair as we passed through a construction zone. I thought it would be funny to pick up a construction cone and carry it for a while, so I asked Kevin to pull close enough so I could nab one at 30mph. I pulled my hand back at the last moment, realizing how much that was about to hurt. But then I found my chance when he slowed down. At 10-15 mph, I grabbed one and just carried it alongside the car for a while. When we neared the actual construction, I considered the possibility that they may not be amused by my shenanigans, so I pulled the cone into the car. Once the road opened up, I put my arm in the cone and stuck it out the window as we pulled up on Robin and Brian. They looked over and started cracking up. I decided that I needed to do SOMETHING with this cone, so I started taking sneaky photos of the cone on everyone’s cars while I figured it out. It’s a pain to have the cone between my legs in the car for the remainder of the street miles, but we needed to entertain ourselves!
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