It's been a couple of weeks since the race took place. I've had plenty of time to post in this blog, but have avoided it for some unconscious, deep seated reason. Yeah, we lost. It wasn't as bad to lose as I thought it might be; it was an epic battle and I'm blessed to have been a part of it.
The Rupert team claimed victory; not by their hand, but by the blocker out of Texas...Hale. It came down to the last race of the last day of the championship for the championship - and we were in it. Going to the Final and hearing the cheers from the other lane was deflating, but I'll never forget it. That is what is going to drive me to do better next season.
I mentioned epic weekend - I'm not kidding; it was absolutely amazing. The car performed perfectly; Ronnie was in a great space and was surrounded by tons of his old racing friends; our driver, Dan, was on the ball and hit his lights and drove the shit out of that machine; as a team, we hit our marks and flowed effortlessly. We gave our crew chief and driver an amazing car to tune and drive and the numbers proved it. Our laps:
Q1 - 5.776 ET 254.09 MPH
Q2 - 5.774 ET 254.09 MPH
R1 - 5.772 ET 245.40 MPH
R2 - 5.768 ET 255.24 MPH
SF - 5.713 ET 257.24 MPH
F - 5.744 ET 256.65 MPH
So, we didn't win the championship, we didn't win the meet, but this is what we did as a team. None of us had anything to be ashamed of - there wasn't another car on the property that ran 5.70's all weekend like we did - Huggy referred to the car as, "That 70's car".... Hale and company had to throw everything they had at their heap to beat us and it took a 5.68 to do it too. My hat's off to them - they did what they needed to do to beat us; but they didn't put out the fire. I think they poured a little nitro on it instead.... :)
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