Mickle Motorsports

What a crazy day with so many ups and downs! We loaded up the cars the day before to keep things simple on Sunday morning. Saturday evening I got word from Josh (acejam2k) that he had found an oil leak on his turbo feed line and that he wouldn't be racing the next day. This made me decide to just run on my street tires rather than wasting the Hoosiers when it would just be my fiance (Sandi) and I in the class. I chose to leave the slicks in the car just in case someone else ended up running in ASP but I had no such luck. I would rather race on the A6s any day over street tires but couldn't justify wasting the precious runs on them. I also much prefer to have some competition in the class but for some reason we haven't had any new drivers come (and stay) in the open class. Maybe we scare them off a little with our times.

It was set to be a very hot day and my Dad, and his support trailer, were not coming to this event so we brought my crappy, cheap, fake EZUp for some shade. Thankfully, it also turned out to be rather windy so it kept things feeling cooler. Once we got unloaded and set up we went out for some course walks. The course looked very interesting with some extremely fast areas broken up with some very tight, slow, challenging elements. We were running in the first heat so at least the course would be fresh in our heads but I already knew that the course would have been so much better on slicks.

We got our cars set up in grid towards the end and as they started sending cars I started checking our tire pressures and found that Sandi's right rear was WAY down from what I had set it to earlier. It was then that I noticed the hissing sound and quickly found the nail in her tire. We scrambled to let the OP Steward know that we were moving her to my car and we would be moving my car to the dual driver grid area. I pulled her car out of the grid line and off the runway so it wouldn't be in the way. Sandi had not raced my car since it's refresh and this was no way to get her feet wet but what choice did she have?

After my first run went smoothly she jumped straight in the deep end and came out OK. She didn't have any issues driving it other than just plain old under driving. This at least confirmed to me that the car was much more smooth and stable now. We managed out 6 runs each even with the 144 drivers in attendance. The course drove pretty much as I expected it to. After leaving the taxiway there was a very fast 3rd gear section that I could have entered much faster but even if I had I was at/beyond the limit of grip with the street tires as I transitioned through those next couple of elements.

By the end of the day I ended up a few seconds off of the pace of the guys I would have expected to keep up with but that was to be expected because of the tires so I think I did alright but still have lots of room for improvement. My first afternoon run ended up being my fastest. I think I was trying to push to hard after that. Sandi ended up improving with each run she took. I think she raw timed the closest to me as she ever has since she started but she had a cone on that run (even though it was still her fastest final time because she finally started gaining some right foot confidence).

By the time we came in for our rest heat in the afternoon the wind had all but destroyed my knock off EZUp, I am surprised it has lasted this long so I wasn't upset and sent it straight to the on site dumpster! We left shortly after finishing packing up rather than waiting around for trophies, there was no honor in accepting the trophy this time. Sandi's leaking tire was holding air well enough that I chose to just pump it back up and head home rather than trying to drive it home on the donut. Thankfully we have 7-8 sets of wheels/tires for our cars so when we got home we just threw another set onto her car so I don't have to rush and find my patch kit and fix it. +1 for my side of the discussion of keeping so many wheels/tires in the basement!

This makes 3 first place finishes out of 9 events. Josh, you gotta bring it at the end of the month!

Video of my fastest run. I had some really crappy lines but every time I switch back to street tires I seem to have this problem. (Video courtesy of Willub because I stupidly forgot my GoPro, Thanks Billy!)