Vintage Trans Am - August 26th Recap

And the story goes - we're on the 7th week of the current points series. Dominant victor and undefeated VTA guru James can not improve his score, so he is no longer racing in our class! Late night Monday, early morning Tuesday, my IM dings and it's Mr. Big Head "Are you racing weds?". I'm thinking "duh?" but respond with the affirmative. DING. "It will be fun to see if you can TQ with me and Big K running in VTA today". WTF is he doing running VTA? Should be interesting as he's usually fast and has good gear to go with it! I marked it down as being odd that someone would come into VTA with only 2 weeks left in the points. Of course my mind wandered on the reasoning...

This week's track layout

We've got a new track layout this week, and it's challenging, but for the life of me I can't recall the last half of the track to draw it out - I've got pics though and will get the layout up this week. I managed to get there a bit early and had time to drive the layout a bit before qualifying began - I struggled a bit with hitting inside boards as most have a bit of a stretch of divider along the inside boards before the track opens back up.

In the first qualifier, I wasn't quite over that "hitting things" stage of learning the track. I was leading the qualifying early on, and had a bit of a gap, but I'd hit a corner here, pop the car up there, and generally just wasn't on yet. I was listening the the times and Willy was ahead of me on the track, but behind me in pace for most of the race. We managed to make it through five minutes with a 23/5:03.4 - Willy finished with a 23/5:03.7! After round one, I was TQ, but I knew that times could definitely be improved by either one of us. Kevin was close behind in third, then Bob, then Matt, and Jeff was out early with that same silly ballcup problem. I got on him about it after the race pointing out that he's dropped out of every race in the last two weeks because of it, and he did wind up changing it before the main.

Going into the second qualifier, I was fat and happy having made a run for the WC (no, not the water closet for you brits!) - the White Castle! Whether it was the calming effect of having eaten, or just how slippery those sliders made me, but the second qualifier was a breeze! I had half an eye on Willy as we get into the qualifier, and I watch him wreck pretty good mid-track and he drops a ways back. I'm on a 23/5:00 pace early on, and just keep driving well, and wound up improving my time to 24/5:08, which is good enough for TQ and 5 bonus points!

Lining up for the main is nice - It's the first time I've TQed all year in any class. Lurking out on the track is another, familiar red and black Camaro. James is putting in a guest appearance in the main! He's starting way at the back, well behind the last qualifier. The tone goes off, and it's a good start, and I'm running well for a few laps, when a bobble has me lose the lead to Kevin. I'm running right on his bumper and James is right on mine looking for any way past. I try to execute a pass on Kevin poorly - I still don't know what I was thinking, but I take him out. I wait up for hima nd I figure we're both going to be left behind, but James waits up too, and we resume our previous order for another couple laps. Kevin bobbles in turn 7, winding up turned around 180 degrees directly in my line - with nowhere to go, I drive right into him, not being slowed up too much, but just enough that James is able to squeak past. Kevin resumed pursuit of me, and I resumed pursuit of James, but nobody managed to catch their pursuee, and we finish in that order. Turns out James didn't count for the points, so I got 105 for the evening, but it still wasn't a win to me.

Next week is the final week - I told Kevin I had to TQ and win both of the last two weeks to take the second spot on the podium from him, and I'm 50% of the way there...