This post was published 2 years 1 month 14 days ago.
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This race was one of those ones that makes the hobby worthwhile. Like at Irwindale I felt utterly competitive and even managed to get in a battle with other cars. It’s not often, especially in the Late Model, that I find myself side by side with anyone, ever, I just haven’t been lucky.

This time, that would all be different. Once again I did no practice whatsoever and grabbed Rusty Greer’s setup from the iRacing forum. I jumped in a qualifying session and set a very competitive time of 23.183. This laptime was fantastic for me, but only put me 7th in a starting order for the race because of the company I was in. I was rated as the 11th best driver out of 11!

Not phased by the fact that I was probably about to get my ass kicked in the race server, I started the race wanting to run to the very best of my abilities. I knew that I had set a faster qualifying time than some of those behind and in warm-up had managed to beat my qualifying time by 0.001s.

I got a good start and held my 7th place until lap 12. During those first 12 laps I had been getting closer and closer to the highest rated driver in the race, who was running 6th. It looked like his tires were not performing and I squeezed by on lap 12 and was followed through by the person who had been running behind me since the race started.

I set my fastest lap on lap 14 (23.071) and continued to push hard. I worked my way closer and closer to the car in 5th and on lap 20 he scraped the wall hard enough that it allowed me time to go by into turn 3. From this point until the end of the race I ran in 5th-place, but felt I was a teeny bit faster than the cars in 3rd and 4th. I closed in on them and after watching their ferocious battle for position managed to get side by side with each of them at different times, but ultimately had to settle for 5th.

I really, REALLY enjoyed this one. I put the full, unedited race up on Youtube.

Full race part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsYcZcBGKQo
Full race part two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMijYVa4n1E