Road to Race One: The Show
Despite parking the car the previous Saturday I got 15 points and $35 for showing up, which was surprising. I headed out for two practices, which included some awkwardly placed cones taking away the inside line in the corners. This is apparently to rubber in a second groove on the track to allow for more practice. Main problem though is in heavier traffic its hard to let faster cars past.
I was of course scratching to start the heat race. A bit of nerves, but I staged in pit lane and it was easier to read the flag man in turn 3 who marshals the cars than I thought it would be - when catch up, when to close up into double file (crossed flags) and how to line up again (motioning with hands to create space between cars and then a point and thrust of a single rolled flag forward to the car needing to go into that space).
First heat I dropped back quickly but an early caution caught me back up. I was better able to keep pace after the restart, but I was still at the back. I was definitely braking longer and harder than in practice, particularly in turn 1 where it was causing me to get loose. I also got too focused on catching two cars in front of me rather than just hitting my marks and I went around all by myself bringing out a caution by braking too deep into turn 1. Ended up second last.
Second heat out I was also over braking and being a bit more cautious, not wanting to spin out all on my own again. Mostly drove around by myself, but didn't get lapped, which was good because it meant i wasn't too slow. Ended up second last again.
For the feature I started second last, I'm on the outside here.
The feature itself was a mess in the first 3 laps. There were 2 restarts before even one lap was in the books. At Barrie there is a full restart if no laps are in the book and with 24+ cars it takes a long time to line everyone up again. I had to get used to crawling the car along by slipping the clutch because there was a lot of crawling along while the order was corrected. Next 14 laps were clean. I started getting lapped with the blue flag/yellow stripe across it being shown to me, so I stayed down low and let the leaders go by on the outside, focusing on keeping my line. My final nail biter was when I was lapping a very slow car with leaders lapping me, I had to basically cut him off on the front straight as I was blocked and I couldn't see any other way around it. At lap 17 I think I was lined up incorrectly with the lapped cars after a cauation, last instead of first of the lapped cars, however I re-passed several of them and ended up 17th.
There is a lot of attrition in a race, just surviving seems to get you a top 20. Overall a great day, I can survive out there.