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Road America Recap

Well, Road America has come and gone.  We headed into the weekend with a 7 point lead over Sheely. Saturday we unloaded the car and went through tech and got ready for the Detroit Speed Autocross. In the morning it was damp and cool. We set the second fastest time before lunch and then headed over to Design and Engineering.

D&E seemed to go well and the judges were very impressed with the car. Everything was going well. During the afternoon autocross session in the dry the times began to fall. On our 6th run for the day we put it all together and got a great time that would have put us just behind Sheely, but we hit a cone. Runs 7 and 8, well we just tried too hard. We ended the Autocross a half second behind Sheely which gave him 17 points

Now we had to wait for D&E results. With his new paint job and other changes since PPIR, it looked like it was all over. After the Lucas Oil Road Rally, we hurried over to see the D&E results. YES! our best finish of the year. We got back 9 point on Sheely and would head into Sunday only down one point for the Championship. Sunday morning we got the car ready, filled it with Ignite Racing Fuel, checked the weather (no rain until 6pm), did the orientation laps, did a couple of Powerstop Speed Stop runs, and headed out on the Road Course for our first session.

All was well. By the turn 5 we had a problem. Even though we had beaded the new pads, not well enough. I could feel and smell them going through the bedding process and not working to fully. I decided to take it easy, not risk the car, and get some easy warmup laps in and fully bed the brakes. After the first session we headed over the Speed Stop and did our final two morning runs. The car was fantastic. Again we got very close to Sheely and felt like there was more in it for the afternoon. So we cooled the car, made a couple of changes and got to grid for our second road course session. The car was on kill, I was ready, we had a plan.

The starter gave us the 5 min warning. Then the 3 min warning. Yes we are ready, wait is that rain, no no no!  Maybe it is light and the track is still dry. We head out on our warm up lap and oh no it is very slick. It does not take much rain in cold conditions to turn Road America into a very slick track. Our day was done, the Championship was Sheelys. He made the most out of every opportunity and performed fantastic. He deserved it! I don't know that we could have out ran him on the road course if it stayed dry or won the championship, but we would have loved to have tried.  It was an awesome season. We are so grateful to our sponsors, the USCA and Optima Crews, all of our family and friends that helped out, and all of the unbelievably fantastic group of competitors that run in the Optima series!

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