Yep, I am upside down, that is not good…
But now as several tens of you are wondering, how did we get here? Well let me tell you it was an eventful last 20 laps.But to get a complete picture let’s start at the beginning…
In the beginning, there was nothing, then bang…
Cars fired up on pit road ready to start the first race of the NASCAR iRacing Series.
Team Oppo started in the 18th. Not the most ideal spot for our strategy of riding around in the back of the lead pack. Around Lap 20, we incurred our first damage of the night as we were shunted from behind trying to avoid a wreck.
The Team Oppo crew did a fantastic job repairing the damage. No speed was lost on the car and we were able to hold with the leaders.
Then things started to go wrong. My weakness in these races is green flag pit stops. Credit where it is due, the field we had was very good and ran for almost 90 laps under green. However, this gave me 3 opportunities to screw up several pit stops. To which I did...
- Stop #1: Opponent spins on the apron ahead of me separating me from my competitors.
- Stop #2: Slid through the stall like a moron.
- Stop #3: I have no idea what happened, but I just couldn’t catch back up.
We are now sitting at Lap 175, 1 lap down, with little chance of getting ahead. The next set of green flag pit stops occur. Hooray, what am I going to mess up this time? Well midway through the cycle the caution came out. Low and behold we were the first car 1 lap down and got the free pass around the pace car.
Coming around and getting 4 tires, I knew this was a second chance for us. And boy did the race turn. Racking the field up, we are sitting 19th with 17 laps to go. The heart beat increases, the adrenaline is flowing and the mental balance between being patient and ram charging through the field is in full swing. As we were running 3x3 4 rows deep, I recognized that this was unsustainable and there was going to be a crash. Sure enough, there was, and we were able to avoid it, pants shittingly.
The result was we lined up 4th with 5 laps to go. 15 laps earlier, we were a non-factor and looking to have a disappointing run. The race restarted with us mired on the outside, we could not get a run going nor were we falling back. Throughout practice, I noticed that the first 3 rows of 2x2 were basically stuck unable to move forward. That sucker hole is where we found ourselves.
Coming to the white flag, I had no idea what to do. Considering how poorly we were running beforehand, I was content with where we were. I did my best to push the car in front of me in an attempt to get ahead.
Coming to the line line, a 6th or 8th place finish looked likely, but then the leader gets turned, cars pile up, we appear to make our way through, then suddenly we are smacked...
the world overturns and sparks fly across the windshield as we skid down the front stretch. What did we get for all of that? 4th!
