2020-03-01 #5 Auto Club Speedway

  • Might as well give this a try!


    Second race with new equipment and my first race in 6 months, having a proper wheel rim!

    due to a shoulder surgery I was stuck to using only my left arm and a formula wheel for a few months. (driving Watkins one handed was a task!)


    The qualifying went way better than expected as I had only practiced long runs and not any quali laps, I paced myself for a long run dropped down to 5th and waited for the drivers in front of me to scrub off their tires, but the first yellow came out to stop that.


    Restart! get myself some valuable track position and snuggle up behind Kevin, I dropped back a tiny bit every lap and thought Kevin was working his tires too hard and it all would come back to me, but he somehow kept his tires alive with an amazing pace! David also did some witchcraft and seemed to have a pristine set of tires as he caught up close to the end of the stint.


    Sadly, all good things come to and end, after keeping my nose clear for 106 laps, in the restart I go for 3rd gear and there is nothing, on the 3rd try my shifter registers the shift, but I'm already back in the middle of the pack with all that it brings.


    on the back stretch some poor driver gets executed on the straight (how hard is it to drive in a straight line, really?) as I saw the car getting executed sliding up the apron I knew that my only chance of survival was that the driver in front being 10km/h off pace up the track would see me and Nicolás coming in hot two wide, sadly he did not.. or just turned down on pure principle, but I won't speculate more on that. I tried to brake but we made contact and the group also got collected by the car that got sent down the apron, so it would probably have ended at that corner in one way or another.


    I enjoyed most of the race, there was a fair bit of pinching and chopping but mostly bummed about being involved in yet another wreck and outside top 10 again.

    Erik Blixt

    Road-Ringer/Oval tryhard of the Vanilla Unicorn #35 Lempls camaro