How It Goes Sometimes

I flew out to Road Atlanta to watch Nick compete in another IMSA series 

Michelin Pilot Challenge with Cameron Racing.

It was an early morning, with qualifying at 8:30 a.m.

Afternoon rain was forecasted, but the morning was dry and there's a lot of excitement
at the track full of spectators, many camping out to see all the races over the weekend.

 

There goes #77. 

He ended up getting 15th for the race.

Between qualies and the noon race, Dan and I took the golf cart to check out the track.

It's a very different vibe than Indianapolis.

The track has lots of hills and runs through dense forest. 

Many spectators are camping out--tents are everywhere as well as RV's, campers and buses.

Nick started and kept up with the pack really well.

Their strategy was to only have one pit to change drivers 

because its only a 2 hour race. They're hoping most others will have two pits.

Unfortunately, the race started out with a yellow flag right from the get-go when a car spun out.

Then another soon after that was cleared.

The bad thing about that is with everyone going slow, everyone is conserving gas and tires,

so most people will only have to pit once.

Nick did awesome!

He raced almost an hour and a half before swapping with Pete

and were able to switch on another yellow, maximizing time.

Rain started with about 15 minutes left of the race.

And with only 5 minutes left, another yellow flag slowed the drivers down,

and our orange and blue #77 wasn't in the line-up when they passed us, 

so we knew something had happened to Pete.

Even pros can lose control when the track is slick

and unfortunately Pete wasn't able to recover and hit the wall.

He was soooo frustrated, especially since he hasn't crashed in 23 years.

It was such a disappointing end to the race, but it's part of racing. 

You go hard, you take risks and sometimes you crash and get towed off the track.

Pete wasn't hurt, just a bruised ego, he said.

As they pulled the car onto the flatbed to tow it away,

I had a little PTSD from Marty's accident and that horrible screech of metal scraping across the road as they pulled it onto the tow truck. The car that was smashed and broken

but kept our boys safe. I know it sounds crazy, but that car will always be a hero to me.