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Saturday Race
After having burned off the tires playing catch up in Fridays race it was time to keep working on the set up. We had two warm up sessions and took advantage of both of them by taking a step big swing on the set up in the first session and then making adjustments from there. Goal was to run hard all session and see what kind of car i had on the last laps. We found something in session one and went further in session two. Sometimes you have to go to far to know when you have gone far enough and two big moments late in the session let us know we had gone too far. We made the adjustments and went out for Saturdays race hopeful that we had the right set up.
The start was faster than the day before but not full roll on like usual and this led to a stack up that may have caused the wreck. We know how hard each spot is to gain once everyone is up to speed so starts can be critical for forward progress for some. The wreck was well documented previously so i will only speak to my experience. Right about the time the green flag flew Selin popped out behind Jim and the lane behind me hit me like a freight train. If i ever wanted to know what nitrous would feel like in a mitata I am pretty sure that was close. If Selin was still there one or both of us would have suffered the same fate as Todd. As it was we had such momentum we were able to drive around Jim and me P1 and SelinP2 going into turn 1. I was't looking in the mirror so I had no idea what happened behind us. Selin saw the wreck and he did the right thing and stuffed it inside me at turn 2 and by turn 4 we were double yellow. By 14 we were red flagged and parked. I could only see one teammate, Trevor and was worried about Chris because he had to be charging hard and would have surely been caught up in a big wreck. We finally got rolling and had about two laps to warm up the tires when we took the green. Selin got a good start and gapped me a bit with Jim behind. I was cautions through turns 2-5 and made Jim push me to 7. Out of 7 i again positioned myself to have a push from the Drago train. Funny thing all my positioning and all of Jims pushing was not helping us catch Selin. We were falling back and at some point Jim had to go and drove around me. When he did my heart sunk because he clearly had big motor on me and I was a sitting duck. We had a gap back to P4 which at some point was Preston so I just put my head down and drove the car clean as I could. Preston caught me a few laps later and was able to drive by from 17 to 1 but had a moment in three that caused us both to go off roading. We gathered it up by 7 and I promptly got dumped. That was two cars from Drago's team that had just drove off from me. At this point i knew i was down 8 to Jim and 5 to Preston and as the moment I was just mentally trashed. How could I win if those guys cars were that good. My car was perfect handling and felt fine so I had no answer and was convinced I was getting "Dragoed" . Everyone who has ever raced with Jim has had those moments, his car is always great. He knows it, you know it and the whole field knows it. What starts as a small thought in the back of your head becomes frustration and fury at some point. I rolled around to the finish in P4 and got out and told Chris, I am F'ed. Told him what i thought about Jim and Preston's cars and sat in impound just beyond frustrated. I had not driven around either of them all weekend at that point and was sure I had seen all the cars but theirs and was confident we were all within 2-3, not down 8 and 5 to the ESR crew.
2 hours go by and after we get out of impound we have an appointment at 5 to see the dyno, as i am driving back to the paddock I noticed the voltage was reading high 11s. WTF, now I know why I sucked. Alternator swap and trip to the dyno showed we found the problem and were back to reasonable power.
There was hope, it was almost like the end of the Star Wars Episode 7, I had found the last Luke Skywalker, (handling and power) and was ready to take on the Sith Lord himself.
BTW Jim, sorry about the evil thoughts I was having in impound. 
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