This was the 2nd to last race of the year, one of the few races where the GS and ST classes are combined together, and the last one that will be shown on TV. I was really looking forward to a good result and maybe a little bit of TV coverage.

The race started and Aaron got an excellent jump on the start and was 2nd heading into turn 1. In the middle of the corner one of the Subaru’s slammed into the back of him and he lost a position or 2, not to mention the rear bumper. Aaron was running in 3rd place for pretty much his entire stint in the car, turning very quick times. There was an early full course caution and much of the field made pit stops, but we knew it was too far from the end of the race to make it on fuel, so they would all have to stop again. We decided to stay out and just do one stop in the middle of the race, instead of 2 like all the people who made early stops.

I finally got in the car once he had run all the fuel out of the car, and I headed out to finish my stint. Because of the different fuel strategies I was a little ways back, but we figured when all the other cars pitted for gas we would make up positions. The team told me that once the pit stops cycled through I would be in third. So, I pressed onwards, trying to put in some good laps while I was running all alone. At this track there are a lot of curbs (raised concrete sections just off the asphalt track surface that are painted red & white) that we have to drive over to make out car go fast. If we don’t jump the curbs our car looses about 2 seconds a lap. I tell you that because all the beating on the car’s suspension knocked the alignment out on the car. This hurt us and we weren’t able to keep up the pace anymore. I was passed by one guy, for what I thought was 3rd position. But as the race neared the end, it turned out that 3 of the cars in front of us were cars we thought would have to pit for gas again. Well they didn’t, and were able to make it to the end on just the one early fuel stop. So I was sitting in 7th place with 2 laps to go and the crew chief comes on the radio telling me that I needed to slow down and let my teammate pass me. The reason for this is because he is in 2nd place in driver’s points right now and only 4 points behind the leader. So every position is very important with only 1 race left.

Pulling over for your teammate is not exactly thrilling for any driver to do, and usually other teams aren’t too happy when that sort of thing happens. But none the less, come the last corner I pulled over and slowed the car down enough so that he could pass me without the car right behind him passing me too. I moved from 7th to 8th on the track and had to settle on another top 10 finish. Every race I have finished this year has been a top 10, but it’s just not very satisfying when all 3 finishes have been pretty poor showings for us. It seems that when everything is looking good for us heading into the race, everything goes wrong in the race and we don’t end up finishing.

We knew the top 2 finishing cars were too fast for us this weekend, but we legitimately had a shot at 3rd place. The luck of the pit strategy didn’t fall our way, and the fact that the alignment got messed up cost us too. It’s just been an extremely frustrating year, and now we are heading to the track that I am most familiar with, of all the tracks we run, for the last race of the season. It’s still up in the air who I will be driving with, but I really need a good result for this race so that team owners will want to talk to me about next year.