Iowa Oval Race

Coming into Iowa I knew it was going to be a long fast paced day. With the entire practice to race schedule taking place all on Friday we definitely had to make the most out of every second. In the first practice, my first time on the track we came out with a good base setup and I got up to speed very quickly! We made a change or two and then the rain started to pour! We only got 20 minutes or so in the first session but we came up to speed quickly which was our goal.

In the next practice session we had to get the car exactly where we wanted it setup wise and me driving wise, as this was our last session before qualifying. We made a bunch of big changes to the car and all were positive, we went faster every time we made a change and managed to use every second of track time we had and used it well!

Off the track and in between sessions we kept busy discussing setup changes and driving changes with the plan to go faster and faster. We felt we had a good car going into qualifying and a car that was able to flat (full throttle) the entire track as it needed to be.

Now for qualifying, This was the first time I ran this qualifying format, in an Indy car or Nascar style format where only 1 car is on the track at one time, and you only have 2 laps to get your best time in!
It was my turn, I went out on the warm-up laps driving hard to get the tires up to temperature so when the time came to throw it down they would be ready. I took the green flag that started my qualifying run, I held the pedal to the floor and turned down into turn one hoping it would stick the entire lap, I kept it too the floor for the 2 laps I had and only managed a couple bobbles.

I felt good about the run feeling it was all that we had to show with the amount of track time we had. We were at a bit of a disadvantage coming in to this race seeing that we had never been to this track before and everyone but us had days of testing under their belt as where we had an hour and 20 minutes, so to qualify only 3 tenths of a second off of 1st place was not bad at all. We were starting 11th which I was somewhat happy with seeing we were on the inside so we wouldn’t get freight trained around the track.

Now it was time for the race, I was going in with the mindset of driving aggressively and charging to the front as I knew we had a consistent car that could run up there. We had a good start narrowly avoiding an accident when 2 cars in front of me got together which caused a full course caution. The restart was a bit of a mess I think a lot of people caught the green flag off guard and expected to do another pace lap. We made it through turn 1 and 2 ok still in 10th place and I drove the car down into turn 3 trying to keep a front wing flap in clean air to get the car to turn and all of the sudden the rear end stepped out really quickly.

I tried to catch it and managed to drift it sideways for a bit but to no avail the rear end came fully around on me and i went sliding backwards dead on into the wall at over 100mph! I hit the wall with the rear then the front and at the same time another car drove into the front/over top of me sending me back down the banking where I was clipped by another car. When everything came to a stop it felt like i had been hit by a truck, my head was pounding, I was a little dazed not knowing exactly what just happened.

After the ambulance ride and they cleared me from the infield medical center with a concussion I got a ride back to the tent to look at the car. It was pretty bad, the engine/bell housing and transmission were all cracked, keep in mind these are thick cast metal pieces. The front end was gone, rear end was all bent and broken. The cockpit surround was even broken just showing how fast my head flew back.

Then as time went by I felt sorer and sorer and I started to notice other things that were hurting as well. So it was a bad way to end what I thought might have been a good race. Overall I don’t think it was a total loss, you have to always take positives from any race and I felt with the track time we had we used it extremely well and got up to speed very quickly. I would have really liked to get a good finish for not only me and my family but for everyone who works on my car and my team.

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