Just finally got home about 1pm today and first things first, congrats to Greg on running a great race. He got out front and stayed there, even with Joe breathing down his neck for the first half of the race.

Prior to the race, I was finally feeling good for the first time the whole weekend. Up until then I wasn't very impressed with my driving and the car was screaming at me to quit fiddling around and give it the right setup. To solve the driving like crap issue, I realized that I was driving pretty conservatively in practice and qualifying because honestly, after how the last two months have gone, I wasn't about to wreck the damn thing again and not even make the race. I also spent some time watching my in-car and convincing myself to quit driving like a pussy. I adjusted the setup once again for the Saturday morning warm up session and was finally pretty happy with my driving and how the car felt. Before the race though, I made one more adjustment to the car that I was pretty confident was going to make it rotate a bit better in 7 and 10a. So all in all, I felt pretty good before the race.

At the start, I was able to get pass Bob Moser but allowed Bob Stretch to squeeze by into turn one. Down the backstraight, I was able to pass Stretch and firmly latch myself onto the back bumper of Greg and Joey up front. At the end of the fourth lap, Greg, Joey, and I were within 3/4 of a second of eachother and I had even clicked off two laps in the 1:43's. Unfortunately on lap five, I ran wide going into the esses, took a creative line through the grass, and gave up several car lengths to the leaders and allowed Bob Moser to catch up behind me. Then on that same lap I missed my shift to fifth down the backstraight, effectively giving third position to Bob and waving bye-bye to Greg and Joey. A very bad lap that was my fault and only mine. A little frustrating because I really thought I had the car to stay with those guys as it was just a rocket from start to finish. But, I did get to spend the next ten laps racing really hard with Bob Moser. We're both Great Lakes Division guys who know eachother well and just as expected, we never once touched. Not a single time. We passed eachother eleven times during that race and never once touched or made any rediculous dive bomb moves. Greg already said the same about Bob's son, Joey. These guys are just awesome and I love racing with them!

Anyways, on the 15th lap, I was finally able to get around Bob for the last time and stretched out on him in a last ditch, no chance in hell effort to catch Greg who was about 11 seconds ahead of me. At the end of the 20 laps, I had cut the gap down to about 7.5 seconds, but I'm sure Greg was in cruise mode by that point.

All in all, I can't be too upset but I wanted that one badly. Really though, only 7.5 weeks prior to the ARRC, the car had been rolled over twice and I wasn't even sure if it was fixable, or if I even wanted to try. But after an absolute metric crap-ton of work by my Dad and I (mainly him!), we got it there, we ran well, and I came home improving on my 3rd place last year, with the fastest ITA lap time, and as the highest placing Integra. I suppose asking for more than that is getting greedy. But man am I glad the offseason is here because I need a break! :P

Oh yea, and Greg, I've never been more excited to pop a head off of a car as I was at about 5pm on Saturday. Good show, old man! Also, you should've seen my face as I was coming down the hill into 10a and saw your car go completely sideways! I thought for sure you were about 1/2 a second from being buried to your axles in the sandtrap. The only thing I could think of was "Oh my God, the Great Lakes Division is about to take first through fourth at the ITA ARRC race!" (we were 2nd through 5th at the time, prior to Jan and Joey's mechanical failures). But that all got dashed quickly, as Greg somehow pulled that thing back in! It gave me a great idea though. Since he's selling the egg and looking for something different, how does "Greg Amy, professional drifter" sound?

I'll try and get some of my in-car video up sometime soon so you guys can see Bob and I going at it. It's great video!