We Finished

Yes, I was tired, so here's the post-race report. I've uploaded a HUGE album to Picasa that will tell the story in photos (with captions), but here's some highlights.

The racing over Saturday and Sunday was great! No one had an incident with another vehicle, although we were black flagged on a few erroneous calls. Paul and Patty were the only drivers on the team that were never called into the penalty box. Everyone drove clean and drove hard. Teddy Busick was out with the fast guys. (Relax, Teddy, that's just a joke!) Mike Poupart drove over on Friday night so he could be there to support Patty and the rest of the team during the race.

On Saturday, due to a few erroneous black flag issues that brought our drivers in and forced us to change drivers earlier than schedules, we had some extra time before the race would end for the day and put Capt. Chris back in the driver's seat for the last 40 or so minutes. After about 20 minutes, he was black flagged and came in. I still had my helmet on and grabbed my seat insert and headed for the penalty box. The truck would be able to go back out if we could change drivers and everyone else walked away without all their equipment. When I got there, Chris was calling for another driver and I threw my stuff in and let them belt me up and got the truck back on the track for the remainder of the race. It was exhilarating to take the checker flag, even though it was just for the day.

On Sunday, the race order was changed to allow the 2 drivers who were without black flags (Paul and Patty) to drive first. The others would rotate in and Chris would drive last. While he was out, he felt a tire going down and began to signal us as he went by on the front straight. It took a couple of laps to figure out the hand signals and when we did, he didn't come in on the next time around so I held up our "Buckeye" sign (signal to come in) and Mark Summers held the wheel/tire up in the air over his head so he would know that we understood and were ready. The tire change was done in under 4 minutes. Everyone had a job! It was great!

We finished the race in 14th out of 94 cars that took the green flag. Not a bad finish for the little race truck. I wonder how many more races she'll make??

Click on the link above to check out the album over on Picasa.

Till next time...
Patty