Round 9 - Schaefer 500 [Jun 20th]

140 laps in, the engine left me. Up until then, I already made it up to 9th position, which was less a matter of speed than staying alive. But it could have held up the remaining 50 or so laps, but maybe I allowed it to run a bit to hot, as I considered myself to be safe on fuel and went with a click more boost for most of the distance.

Also, I probably ran the wrong setup, I came up with something that was a bit more willing to turn in on T1 & T2, yesterday, but today, the car was horribly pushing tonight. But could also have been the track changed over night, as my Q setup didn't work quite as intended, as well. What probably didn't help either was me having practically practiced all alone the whole week, so I had no idea what the car would be like in traffic. It was very hot and sticky, and there's soccer EC going on here, that interfered a bit with my preparations as well, and I was kind of uprepared for the lenght of the race. 25 laps or so in I did some quick maths and realised the race will be close to 3 hours - and no water bottle near me... I had a pretty decent start and some fun battles early on, I could keep up as long as the field wasn't spread out, but from there, it quickly became lonely. I had some luck early on, when I was side to side to side with Alan Santo. I relied on the spotter who told me, my right side was clear, so I let the car run wide. But he was still there, that caused some damage to my right rear suspension, but luckily didn't affect the handling. Also, the very moment I pitted for the first time, a yellow was thrown, I think I just made it out of the pits before the safety car left. Phew! When Angel May spun off, I expected a another yellow and turned into the pits two laps earlier than planned, that put me a bit of my schedule. Around lap 70, my concentration waned and I brushed the wall in T2. Else I was doing my thing, racing, pitting, trying to stay out of the way of faster cars, everything else I could potentially have raced was already gone or had become faster over the distance. Exiting T2 on lap 140, I had the impression something was feeling a bit odd on acceleration, but I considered it a tire issue. But going out of T1 the next time, the last thing I heard was a popping sound and that was the end of the race.

Let's see, superspeedway config seems to work for me, I might come back at Ontario!

Man, that was a fun one. Didn't qualify well but that was okay. I made my way through the field and was running 10 by the time of the first pit stop. At the end of the second stint I spun and lost my rear wing and spent a load of time getting things repaired. At the end of that stint I had made back a decent amount of the time lost. In all of that I accidentally knocked my shifter after getting a drink of water and over revved the engine. Even though I was still good for the moment I knew the engine wasn't gonna last long because I heard a rattle progressively get worse throughout the run. I'm still happy that I had finished as many laps as I did and made the moves that I did. Definite improvement over what happened at Indianapolis and hopefully I will have more of a handle on this car come Ontario and I can hopefully be more of a threat.

Congrats to David Jaques on the win and to Jason White for making it so close after 500 miles.

Thank you! Was a tough one being all alone for most of the race, but after that involuntarily stunt at the Indy TT, I owed the car its race. And its evident Jonathan really loves that OSB panel bomber!

But I'll definitely try to get my hands on something more competitive for the California 500!

BTW, coming back to the excellent broadcast, I could double stint outside and triple stint inside tires, though towards the end of the inside tires life, it really got hairy.