Today's thought...Race day!!!!

Okay so yeah, embarrassingly, I haven't blogged about Sunday until now, but you know...whatever! I've had more pressing blogs! LoL! Okay Sunday was the most destructive race day since I've been Autocrossing! By far! First off, the track was extremely technical. And don't get me wrong, I'm all about a technical track. As I've said myself and I quote: "A technical track is good for the Autocrossers soul!" and I stand by it. No matter how rough my stress has been or no matter what's been going on, a technical track will help me clear my head faster than almost anything.

Well this track was a little...too technical. And there was 1 element that made it so. The stop box was probably twenty-five feet from the end timing lights. Now when you're pulling that last stretch through the slaloms, you're going thirty-five, forty miles an hour. Twenty five feet is a get through the timing gate then slam on your brakes so you can stop before the stop box. If you've never Autocrossed before, then you can't understand, but when you're driving that fast, twenty-five feet is NOT a lot of time before you start running over cones and get the track time disqualified. Well Frog and I were driving the Miata. And the way it works is he drives, then we get back in line and I drive. It works out because there are more than just us that drive the same car. We just have different numbers, and our bar-codes with our numbers are on our helmet or windshield of the car. So when we pull up to the starting line, they scan it, which tells the timing trailer who is at the starting line, then once you cross the timing lights, your lap begins.

Well Frog takes his turn around the track, we pull up, stop for a second, get ready to swap out when all of a sudden we hear squealing tires. We look up in time to see a white Corvette, spinning out of control, going into the ditch there at the track, then bouncing off the culvert in the bottom of it. And I mean this car bit the ditch HARD! Turns out as a result of this, they move the stop box another thirty feet down the track and the Corvette was totalled from the damage done to it.

Then we move on to later in the day. Second heat of the day, Frogs third run and we get red flagged on the track. Now in most cases, when you're red flagged, it's because the other car out on the track with you has had damage or something along those lines and unless it's your fault for having a faulty car or a body part hung out the window or something like that, you get a rerun. Well, it was damaged alright. The suspension and axle broke, the drivers side front wheel came off of the car completely, rolled up under the car and by the time he got it stopped, the tired was stuck, under the back bumper, lifting the back end of the car completely off the ground. Now, this is a Nissan 240 SX and I know the wheels were at least seventeen inch racing tires. Turns out that one was totalled too. It completely buckled the unibody and did insurmountable damage.

Needless to say, for the last day at that track for this season, it was definitely memorable and outside of all the carnage on the track, it was a great day! I won a nice canvas lawn chair that probably has SCCA insignia on it, I don't know, I haven't looked, but Frog won a hat, and then we went to Culvers. Mmmmmm. I love Culvers.