Where to start... well, Watkins Glen New York. A very famous track, one of the best in the country, and probably my favorite. The high speeds and banked corners make for a very fun track, but not alot of room for mistakes...

I arrived on Thursday expecting to be working for Compass360 Racing again. But because of a series of unfortunate events for the team and one of their drivers, there was a possibility of an open seat in one of their 3 cars. The team owner was going to fill the seat, but his would-be co-driver was the team points leader. This meant that whoever was going to drive this car needed to be a quick driver capable of a good finish. The first day of practice came and went, decisions were still to be made, and we only had 2 more practice sessions and qualifying left before the race.

Meanwhile another team was in need of a driver and quietly pulled me aside to see if I could drive their car. So, here I am at the track with no ride the day before, and now two teams want me in their car. The problem was that I was committed to work for the Compass team, so the other deal was pretty much out of the question. And the Compass ride was a pretty long shot, because the owner really wanted to drive.

After some hard thought the team decided to let me drive instead of the team owner, and I was pretty excited. I was chosen because the team though that I could do a better job than the owner (who is a pretty good driver in his own right). Alot of confidence was placed on me, but along came with that came an expectation to perform under pressure.

So, my co-driver qualified, meaning he had to start the race, and I was scheduled to be the anchor and bring home the car in the end. There was a huge field, 70 something cars with 40 something in our class. Christian (my co-driver) was starting in the 21st spot. Our strategy was that if a full course caution came out after the 30 minute mark I would get in the car and drive the remaining 2 hours. So, sure enough at 31 minutes our first full course caution was upon us. We pitted and I was strapped in. The stop went pretty smooth and I was in the car ready for a long race. The caution period ended up being pretty long, so The team decided to pit me once more to top up with fuel and with some luck we could stretch it out to the end of the race without another pit stop. But as the fueler pulled the fuel line out of the car it broke and dumped about 5 gallons of gas all over our pit box. I was able to get out of there before the gas got in contact with any hot surfaces (which there are alot of on a race car) so luckily no fireballs ensued.

My crew was so tied up with cleaning up the spill that I didn't get the call on the radio in time that we were about to go back to green flag racing. This was not good, because I had let my tires cool down so they didn't have as much grip. When I noticed that we had gone back to green it was about a second too late. I had a horrible re-start and got passed by one car. But the worst part was that my tires were not up to temp yet. I knew it would take about a lap or so before I could really go 100% comfortably. But, there was no time to waste I had another competitor breathing down my neck. So, I was able to hold the next guy off for a couple more corners but then we came to what is called the "Carrousel" - so called because of the long, seemingly never ending fast corner. The tires were giving up grip and I drifted a little wider than I would have liked and dropped a tire off at the exit, not a big deal, this sort of thing happens all the time. But what I didn't realize was that the quick bump knocked my brake pads back off the rotors. It's all very technical, but what this means is that when you hit the brake petal instead of the pads chomping right down on the rotor and stopping the car, they chomp air. It takes a few pumps of the petal before the pads find the rotor and actually stop the car. Not a big deal as long as I am aware this has happened, but since I didn't realize this car is effected by bumps worse than many other cars, I had no clue the brakes needed to be built back up. So here I go into the next corner carrying around 110 mph and I jump on the brakes hard... immediately I realize that I am screwed. I got a couple pumps in, but by the time the brakes were working I was a few hundred feet past where I needed to start slowing down. All I could do was pitch the car into the corner and try to get is slowed down before hitting anything.

But with all my effort, it was too little to late. I tagged the wall pretty hard with the passenger door and came to a stop. The corner workers were running over to see if I was alright, and all I could do was push the starter button and see what happened. The car came back to life, I suck it in gear and off she went. I couldn't believe it, we were still in this thing. I had slowed it down enough...

I did a quick pit stop to let the crew take a look at what a nice re-finishing job I had done to the car and they said all the wheels seemed to at least appear to be pointing in the same direction. So off I went. Immediately I could tell the right rear shock was not working as it should, and the shifter was feeling pretty bad. But I soldiered on and we had another full-course caution. As we went back to green I downshifted into turn 1 and I came up with no gears, I coasted the car to a safe spot off course and tried to find anything to keep me moving. FOURTH GEAR there it was right there in the middle. I was still moving quick enough for me to engage it and keep going. So we aren't out of it yet... are we???

Well I'll try shorten up the drama a bit now, turns out the shifter cable was broken and I was lucky to find fourth gear. But this track requires 12 shifts every lap using 3rd 4th and 5th gears. Now I was trying to race using just 4th. It was my only option. I could get away with the 3rd gear corners by carrying a little more entry speed and just not having the grunt coming out of the corners, but what really killed me was the long back straightaway. I was topping out in 4th gear at 98 mph, while my competitors were zooming by at close to 140 mph, not to mention the faster class of cars passing me at about 160! I was turning lap times around 2 minutes and 20 seconds, while the leaders were doing 2:11's. Lucky for me there were quite a few full course cautions and I was able to stay on the lead lap the whole race. While other cars wrecked or had other failures and fell down a lap or so, I was able to limp around and finish in 23rd place. Not good by any means, but in the points. Better than we all thought when I pulled the junked up car into the pits right after the wreck.

So, basically I had a really good shot at proving myself to the team and showing them that I could get a good result for the championship hunt, and I didn't get it done. So, that is definitely the biggest blow to my professional racing career. Not much I can do about it now, except hope for another shot at some point and redeem myself. It's hard to get second chances in this sport though.

At this point I just hope my whiplashed neck heals soon, so I don't have a constant reminder every time I look over my shoulder.