In the last segment of the blog we had just completed the heat race. I had gained a couple of spots, and kept the car in one piece, however, contrary to what I believed going into that afternoon, stock car racing, even at this level, was much harder than I had anticipated.
I sat on the edge of my trailer after the heat race, with a million thoughts running through my head. For the life of me, I really couldn’t remember the race. It all happened so fast, the green flag dropped and I followed ten other screaming racecars into turn one. The next thing I knew, the checkered flag was flying. I sat there, wondering what I had gotten, not only myself, but all my friends into.
I was informed by the chief steward, and the race director, that since I had no prior experience in these cars, I was going to have to start in the back of the pack. I acted upset about it but, in all honesty, I was relieved. The feature was called for and my crew got the car ready for action. I suited up and strapped in. There were 19 cars competing that night in our division, and I was starting shotgun on the field. It is said that growing up racing the Saturday night short tracks of America
The field got the 1-to-go signal from the head flagger, and the lights went out atop the pace car. While the leaders were exiting turn 4, I was still on the backstretch due to the amount of cars. The green flag was displayed and we were turned loose. I got up to speed and shifted into high gear. I was able to pick up 2 spots on the first lap, and I was gunning for more. The car felt like it was all over the place, but I was able to gain on the cars ahead of me. I passed another car and set my sights on the 15th and 16th place cars. They were side by side and banging off of each other. I remembered thinking to myself, “This isn’t where I want to be, these guys are getting into it.” That thought was interrupted by the car on the bottom starting to spin going into turn 3. I started to check up to avoid the car, in doing so, the car that was behind me went to my outside and blocked me on the bottom. Somehow the car that was spinning kept it on the bottom of the track and did a 180 degree spin to face me. At the speed we were traveling and the car to my right, I was not able to move to the outside and get around him. So I tried to go low, and in doing so I hit his right front with my right front.
After I hit him I somehow regained control and tried to understand why all this smoke was coming from the front of my car. What I realized was, the smoke was steam from my radiator, and steering was getting much harder. I was limping down the frontstrech when the flagger started waving the black flag at me and race control was yelling at me to stop where I was. I stopped the car and shut the engine off, lowered my window net and climbed out of the car. I walked around to the front of the race car, and saw that I no longer had a front bumper, and a big puddle of water underneath the car. I refused a ride on the ambulance, waived to the crowd and walked back to pits.
I was upset, to say the least. I changed out of my firesuit and waited for my car to be towed back to the pit area. The tow truck came and dropped the car off, and drove away. The front of the car was absolutely destroyed. The right front tire was pushed back into the right door, and the whole front of the car was ripped open. The only thought I had at that moment was, “How in the world was I getting this thing on the trailer”. It only has 3 wheels that roll, it can’t steer, and I have no idea if I hurt the motor.
To make a long story short, we winched the car onto the trailer and packed everything back up. We left the speedway and headed home, with a much different mood in the truck than 9 hours before. I only completed 3 laps of the feature, and I had a check for 110 dollars in my pocket for my troubles. This was not how I envisioned my first race.
Thanks to everyone who follows this blog, leave a few comments- let me know what you think. As always- please check out my sponsors on this page, they help me out so see what they are about. Happy New Year to all- stay safe and start the new year off right. Check back January 4th for the next update.
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