The bad luck continues, but at an all new level. This time it wasn't one just thing that went wrong. There's a whole story of bad luck.

It all started off the weekend with a broken shock, which sidelined us for some practice and we missed some time to tweak the car. That wasn't a big deal though. Then qualifying didn't go great, Taz wasn't happy about it, but again not a killer. So, the race...

Taz had a great start, working his way to the front, he was in the lead by the time he handed the car off to me. After the pit stops I was in 5th, where I was able to work up to 2nd. Then slipped back to third. This seemed good, but I was complaining to the crew chief about how bad the car was handling. I couldn't believe how bad it was, considering how good it had been in the morning practice. The problem was that the CV boot on the driveshaft had broken (the same thing that put us out at Daytona). This really makes the car handle bad, and leads to a total failure of the half shaft.

Even with the eminent failure, I was able to push on and hang onto 3rd. I was very content there, considering. So the plan was to soldier on and hope for no yellows. We got one, so I had to really push hard to keep 3rd place. We had opened a gap to 4th so I settled down and was following around 2nd place (Jamie Holtom).

So even though I didn't think about it I knew luck was against me once again. With about 20 minutes left heading into turn 2 (the fastest part of the track) I went for the break petal, like I had done many times before that, and there was no petal resistance. It went right for the floor. I immediately started pumping the petal trying to build up some pressure in the system, but nothing. So I just stared jamming down gears trying anything to slow the car. It helped, but not enough. The large 3 car length gap to the car on front disappeared quickly. As he turned in for the corner I realized there was no way I was going to make the corner (I had maintained false hope until then) I did a last minute panic turn in the wrong direction to avoid him, but too late. I collected him and we both spun. He was going slow enough to keep both of us from going into the sand trap, but the damage was done.

Jamie continued, but down a few positions, and I set off to see just how bad the breaks were. As I continued for the next lap I went off the track twice because I couldn't slow the car down. I was about to come in and have the crew check it out when I was called in for a penalty for hitting Jamie. Not surprising, especially when the officials couldn't tell I lost my breaks, it looked like I just punted him.

Anyway, the crew isn't allowed to touch the car during a penalty. So as I was telling them I couldn't drive it they told me to just go out do a lap and come back in. So I did... That was interesting. What had happened was that my break caliper had blown out a seal. So every time I hit the break petal, instead of clamping down, fluid just shot all over my hot breaks. Break fluid is quite flammable, so I had a little fire going on. When I coasted back into the pits I just went behind the wall and got hosed down by the fireman.

So our day was done along with our podium finish, to make matters worse, Jamie's podium was out of reach too. So I had that whole team mad at me. They figured I just did something stupid and took him out. So that was fun apologizing and explaining how there was nothing I could do. It didn't really help make them happy, but it was all I could do.

Oh well, you race long enough crap like this happens. All we can do is look to the future and hope for a little better race next time. One win will wash away the heartache that has been the 2007 season.