ANDERSON, Ind. — It was another trip Back Home Again in Indiana, as my season-long racing adventure took me to Anderson Speedway for sprint car racing.
I was back in Davey Hamilton Racing’s 410 non-winged sprint car at the famed quarter-mile bullring.
After that, it was off to Virginia Int’l Raceway to drive Arrive Drive Motorsports’ F1000 car.
Anderson Speedway gave me a shot at redemption from my last time there in a sprint car, when I failed to make the feature and got only 25 laps of experience, which was very disappointing. This time, however, there was no risk of not making the feature — everyone was going to start the race — which was definitely good news for me.
Through two rounds of practice, I did my best to get up to speed as quickly as possible. Then, it was straight into qualifying, which was another struggle. I qualified near the back of the field because I was overdriving the car.
What was getting me up to speed quickly in practice was me being smoother on the entries of the corners and not braking very much.
A conversation with Davey Hamilton afterwards confirmed my inclination to be smoother on the brake, only using it for security and instead just lifting a little earlier. Then, gather speed into the entry to take advantage of Anderson’s significant banking.
I did my best to implement his advice as I rolled off for the 100-lap feature in 20th position.
The race didn’t start off great for me, as I struggled with the car in finding the pace of the fastest cars on track. I ended up getting stuck behind a car that I was faster than but couldn’t pass. I got held up enough over the course of 20 or so laps that the leading pack of cars caught me and I move to the bottom of the track to let them lap me.
This was mildly frustrating, but I knew going into the race that my primary goal was simply to finish the race and get as many laps as I could to maximize the experience gained. As I was still unable to make my way around the car in front of me, it was only another 15 or so laps that it took for the leaders to catch up to me again and begin the lapping process a second time.
However, the leader got impatient and tried to move me up the track on the exit of turn two and decided to pass me along the bottom on the back straight. I tried to move down to the bottom of the track as a lapped car, but another car popped underneath me heading into turn three and we made light wheel-to-wheel contact.
At this point in the middle of turns three and four, I knew I couldn’t move down or up as I would risk making contact with another car, causing an incident. A couple cars went ahead and sandwiched me in the middle by passing me on the outside, as I did my best to hold my line.
It was a precarious situation and as I exited turn four onto the front straight the caution light went on because of an accident.
I hoped that the incident wasn’t my fault, but figured it was a side-effect of the three-wide condition that was instigated by the leader’s hasty desire to lap me. Every time a caution flew, I was restarting behind the same car and every time I got held up significantly in my attempts to pass him safely.
This caused me to lose significant ground to the pack of cars on the lead lap.
Somehow, for the final restart of the race, I was in 10th place and on the lead lap. After getting by a lapped car, there were two laps to go, and the front four cars of the race lapped me while scrapping hard for the win.
I finished 10th. The car was a little too loose throughout the race, which kept me from matching the lap times of the fastest cars on track. But l was only about .3 seconds slower on average than the frontrunners, which wasn’t too bad for my first feature at Anderson in a 900-horsepower sprint car.
Ultimately, we accomplished our goal of finishing the race all in one piece and moved up 10 positions.
After a couple days off, it was off to my next race at VIR. The plan was to show up on Sunday of the SVRA weekend and run the 75-minute enduro that was scheduled as the final event of the weekend.
Originally, we had planned on running the Pro Mazda there so I could get more experience in that car, but it ended up having a mechanical issue that took it out of the weekend. Luckily, Dustin Hodges with Arrive Drive Motorsports had the wherewithal to bring the F1000 car there as a backup, and that was the car that I ended up driving.
I had never driven the F1000 car at VIR, but I knew the track well and I knew the car well. We got up to speed early and it appeared I might get a very easy podium or win, barring any mechanical issues or major driving mistakes on my part.
However, a mechanical issue is exactly what happened.
I started last by not having qualified for the race, but by the apex of turn one, I was in the lead. This was pretty cool but not unsurprising considering I was the only high-performance formula car running the race. I was dealing with cold tires on the first lap and the engine temperature was way too high, around the 235-degree range.
I got on the radio to the team, but they were unable to hear me.
The engine temp didn’t surpass 240 degrees, which was still too high, but I continued in the race.
On the sixth lap, the team radioed me to the pits. Long story short, over the next 35 minutes they worked on fixing the issue and sent me back out to try it, but it was to no avail. I came back to the pits and my weekend ended after only seven laps.
I was bummed but it wasn’t the end of the world and I still got to run some hard laps around VIR in a F1000 car.
The weekend ended on a low note, but I was still grateful for the opportunity.
It’s hard to feel sad about things like that when I’ve been blessed with so much. I thank God every day for what he’s blessed me with in my life and I look forward to my next weekend of racing where I’ll be able to wheel around the F1000 car at Pittsburgh Int’l Race Complex once again to cement my North American Formula 1000 Championship victory.