FT Birmingham

Dang...bad luck. Came up over a hill and what was stopped right in my path? Yep...a pretty little F-Trainer. SMACK! My right front wheel went flying off to who knows where and now I'm seeing sparks in my right side mirror which are coming off my axle I presume. So I take my tricycle-trainer around the track and into the pits. Guess they can't fix that kind of damage because nothing happened when I pulled up into my pitbox.

I had a pretty uneventful run. Start went well and everyone was shuffling around nicely, untill sector two. I was able to skim through that into third place, and held that position untill the second to last lap, and due to a self error, I lost my front wing, and two spots to finish in 5th.

note: Bennett, seeing your rtAdv in my wing mirrors sideways made my race experience complete. ;>

Sorry to EVERYONE... really.

Made a couple mistakes there in those opening laps which compounded issues further in the field causing numerous car to be taken out of the race.

I don't know who it was passing my on lap 1: I lost track of where you were and turned right in on you. All my fault and i am very sorry.

Lap 2: Following the 5th or 6th place car I had one of those "whoa! You brake there?!" moments and spun it around trying to avoid a punt, which caused all sorts of mayhem.

I do love this car/track combo though.

Grats Chris on that first win :-)

Ugh. Really wish I had practiced *this* layout of the track, and not the Sprint (hey, I thought Short meant *short!* ;)

Thought I did semi-ok despite that, especially given that this was my first race in FT's. Had a frustrating self-spin in lap 3 that cost me my front wing. Got it replaced, but the car was still a bit twitchy after. Just glad to finish without any worse incidents (though, my goal at this stage is to finish without *any* incidents).

tim: I don't know who it was passing my on lap 1 --> me

no problem, it was fun

I had to back out of this one and now I am sorry that I did as my teammate Chris got his first R2P win! Well done!

The first one is always the best and to finish ahead of someone like Dmitry makes it that much more enjoyable.

Thanks for the kind words guys!

A first win anywhere is indeed special, but I would be remiss not to thank Tim and Juan for making it possible when they both spun in front of me on the first lap.

Dmitry lurked in my mirrors throughout the majority of the race, no doubt ready to capitalize on any mistake which I fortunately didn't make. Beginning at about the half way point, the combination of me focusing on hitting my marks and an apparent slip or two by him allowed me to put a few precious seconds between us by lap 20. The last five laps were spent repeating "don't [screw] up" over and over in my head.

Thanks to all the lapped traffic for the courtesy shown throughout, and congrats to my teammate Garth for his top-five.