Literally the definition of “Did You Ever Have One of Those Weekends”
These pictures say it all. The WG weekend traditionally has two TransAm Races, one Saturday and another on Sunday and that makes it a double points weekend toward the end of the season. It can be a game changer if you’re chasing the championship. And we are.
The main goal is to obviously do as well as possible on Saturday but take care of the car, make it through the race with as little damage and wear as possible and go for broke on Sunday. Historically, a lot of guys use it all up on Saturday, leaving Sunday a little bit easier pickings to do well and basically score a little higher up than where you deserve to be.
We made it through Thursday and Friday and Edward qualified 12th about 6 spots below his normal qualifying position in a field of 39 cars but given the above “plan”, right where we wanted to be.
So the green drops on the Saturday race and Edward was doing fine and then on about lap 5, coming onto the front pit straight and in one of the few places where there are cement walls and no room for error. There was a loud “bang” (you can hear it in the replay of the in-car cameras/data collection system) and the car spins violently hitting the wall hard. Very hard! Edward was unhurt and all fire and safety systems functioned as intended, but the car is a “write off”. It turned out to be a blown left rear shock absorber cap which sprayed shock oil all over the tire.
Now – Fast forward to weekend’s end and the transporter is loaded and on its way to the next race at VIR (Virginia International Raceway) and while cruising down the highway the right front tire blows, spinning steel belts and rubber chunks everywhere destroying the front hood, bumper and right cowl sections. Fortunately, and due to good driving, Jake was able to maintain control of the “big rig” and get it pulled over to the side of the road, but we could have definitely done without that incident, although it did help to get everybody’s mind off of the loss of a racecar.
