Possibly my worst weekend ever. The car was perfect. The weather cleared up. And I ended up with two DNFs.

I suspected I would be fastest, so I decided to race myself. I had set the goal of beating my personal best and setting a new lap record.

THIS IS NOT A GOOD WAY TO APPROACH A RACE WEEKEND.

I made every lap a qualifying lap. Both races I started strong and built up a substantial overall lead. Then both times in assertive overtaking, I became a victim of misplaced traffic. 

In the Sprint, I was overtaking two cars fighting it out in the Outer Loop. The first car made room for me but the second car had no idea I was there. He saw the other guy back off and came down forcing me onto the turtles. That in itself was okay except for the driving school cone on the turtles. The cone broke the splitter which in turn punctured a tire. DNF.

In the Enduro, and in pretty much the same location, there was debris on the track. The car ahead went low to avoid the debris. I then went high to avoid it and figured he would stay on that line. He didn't. He came back up high on the corner, with me in his blind spot. There was contact and I went spinning into the tire wall. DNF #2.

Interestingly enough, the tire wall did a spectacular job of stopping the car. Considering the speed of the crash, the damage was not that bad. The data logger registered less than 2Gs of total impact. So the biggest lesson I learned is just how good our safety equipment is.

The other lesson to take away is that when you are leading a race by a safe margin, you have to revert to a "conserve the car" attitude. I failed misserably at this bit of "strategic thinking" and am now paying the body shop bill. 

Maybe he should have seen me. Maybe I didn't need to pass him there. Establishing blame doesn't matter. The result is the same.  DNF will a big repair bill.

Here it is:

Sprint

Enduro (more interesting)

Nascar ending...