Redemption Arc
Hey everyone! Lets start with a little look through our season thus far
We started at Sonoma, first with a sixth place finish after a bit of a communication mishap, but we backed it up with a win in race two and took over the championship lead. We then headed over to Circuit of the Americas in Texas, which didn’t end quite as well. Despite some absolutely fantastic stints from Sam and I, and one of the best setup race cars I’ve ever driven, we made a whole host of errors as a team. A drive through penalty plus a 40 second addition to our race time found us finishing in 8th that weekend. Worst part being COTA’s event is double points, so our championship lead turned into 5th with a 40+ point deficit to the leaders.
As championships go, everyone always makes mistakes throughout a season and throw away some points. But, we had just thrown away all the points we could in the first two rounds. This means no more mistakes, we need to continue to maximize every result we have the ability to produce, and be the most prepared team before every weekend.
Sam and I spent many hours on the simulator in the short run between COTA and Sebring. Fun fact this is the first track we go to on the schedule that I had already been to, so Sam and I were right up to speed out of the box. As I’ve said in past, the BMW loves the heat and Sebring didn’t disappoint on that end, with ambient temperatures being over 95 degrees every day throughout the weekend.
Our cars were in the window immediately thanks to the awesome engineers at Random Vandals, and our new engineer for the 94 car Skylar was quickly getting acclimated to being in the engineering role and communicating between Sam and I.
Roll on Saturday morning with qualifying where Sam had his best result thus far in 13th, just 1.7s off the pro pole sitter in his group and the 3rd fastest Amateur. I backed that up in qualifying 2 as the best BMW of the group, qualifying P6 overall! So, two good starting spots, and a car we know will be significantly better in the race than in qualifying… But I’m not sure any of us expected it to be this much better.
Sam started race 1 and had an absolutely fantastic first lap, grabbing the lead of the Am’s and hanging onto the back of the pack of pros before an early yellow brought us to pitlane. In the stops we lost one spot to Parker Thompson in the Supra and opened a 2 second gap to the pack ahead, so I had my work cut out for me. In 3 laps I was to the bumper of the cars ahead, scything through the Silver class cars to catch the Pro-Am leader. Finally getting to his bumper I showed a nose into T7 making him go defensive to get a run down to T10. He again defended into T10 and I was able to swap him at the apex and take the Pro-Am lead! At this point we were in an odd spot with the car behind me being in class for position and the 3 ahead being in the Silver class. Upon catching one of them I went by fairly easily trying to put a car between myself and the chasing cars behind. On the final lap the two silver cars ahead had a bobble and I got a big enough run to clear them both on the back straight to jump to second overall, just behind our sister car taking the win!
In race 2 I started from 6th, immediately getting up to P4 on lap one before hunting down the pack ahead and overtaking to get up to second in class. At this point the other cars hadn’t “heat-soaked” yet, so our pace was not so fantastic that we could drive away, but I was strong enough to lead the field throughout the rest of the 35 minute stint before giving the car to Sam under yellow. On the green Sam swept around the outside of the car ahead and took the overall lead of the race, with the 97 car following through. We later swapped positions, but it was another 1-2 for Random Vandals, and a double win in their respective classes!
It was the exact weekend we needed after our slip-ups at COTA. We’re back up to 2nd in the championship (with an 11-point gap) heading into the summer break, and we couldn’t be hungrier for more
See you soon!