As always, win or lose this is always one of my favorite events and one of my favorite places to visit.
Saturdays race was very straight forward, Preston and I qualified together and worked together to get away. We pulled a good gap and raced it out the last lap. Preston passed me into five, I got 3/4 past into Canada but he maintained the lead and I tried getting him up the front straight, he beat me by .063
Sunday looked like it was going to be Saturday all over again. Watching videos, had there been no yellows and then the full course caution, I think it would have been. We had broken draft until the yellows came out and Kyle was running alone in third. After the caution, it was a race. I chose ( poorly) to go on 1 session tires with 6 laps on them, the rest of the top 6 on stickers. So anyone thinking these 7.5s would respond differently, they don't. Stickers were the call. ( BTW, best guess my tire plan would have saved the class over 50,000 this weekend alone, let that sink in and would have NO effect on Sundays race other than all of us would have had to drive harder) I knew I was in trouble lap one in the carousel. As the race went on, the others tires started coming back to what I had been racing for awhile and I would guess we we all similar in carousel by lap 9 or so. Preston and I got separated several times during the race. Kyle Greenhill always maintained 2-3 position for most of the race it seemed. The last 4-5 laps or so i was leading and the 5 behind me battling, swapping partners and looking for advantages. That put me 30 yards or so ahead on the start of almost every straight, which is a terrible place to be. Several times I felt like a cup driver blocking runs up the front straight as one train was passing the other, I almost got run over by the train once into one. Heading into Canada the second to last lap. Chris/ Danny had a run up the inside, we turned in at 12 side by side, all four of us with Greenhill and Brown in there somewhere. We continued side by side all the way through 14. Danny and Chris on the inside and myself and Preston on the outside. Preston got a really good run and we drafted past and into the lead again heading in to turn one. From there it looked like a clean lap and we could settle it among ourselves. Preston tried me out of the kink, he tried the outside of 12 and almost stuck it, but broke the rears free a little. At that point the race should have been completely over and I knew it. I just needed to get through 14.. for two years in a row, the same corner , the same lap , for the win.. I was way too cautious in this corner and I missed it both years Preston got a run on the outside and Greenhill on the inside, we crossed 1-2-3 , .1 apart at the line. Two races, two different winners, total margin of victory .16 Runoffs will be a lot of fun and looking forward to it