It was an interesting weekend. Our race at Palmer was Saturday and Sunday. After a beautiful week, the forecast was for rain and especially thunderstorms. This is a problem as we can race in the rain, but the corner workers can not be outside in a lightning storm.
Justin went up on Friday Night in order to get his car’s annual inspection. I was thinking about it but then the rains hit Torrington. I went to sleep and got up at 5am to drive up.
We had to scramble to set up our paddock space, but everything was well set up before 9am.
Our group went out around 10:30 for practice - on a dry track. I told Justin I would lead him around for a few laps because he had never raced here. (WE had reviewed my videos and he had watched many more) Of course on the third lap, who passed me like I was standing still?… I settled in following him, to see how good a teacher I was and how good a student he was. Toward the end of the session he was pushing his knowledge and I was using his draft - and ended up with a qualifying time 1 second faster than him - this ended up being important.
Back in the pits, we prepared the cars for the afternoon race. I was starting 6th and he started 8th. The flag dropped and off we went. Justin did a great job and made it up to 7th, while Chris dropped to 10th as some faster cars made up for their bad qualifying and avoiding an out of control car cost him the draft. However, Chris’s time from qualifying was still faster that Justin’s race time, so Chris would start in front of Justin again for the next race.
Then things got interesting for Justin. The race ended before 4pm, and he had to go back to Norfolk for his annual Volunteer Firefighter dinner. No problem, the trip was 90 minutes - enough time for him to get home and get ready. He would just have to repeat the trip the next morning, but had plenty of time since we were not expected to race until 10am. The weather forecast was for rain, the same rain that had not materialized on Saturday.
So Justin went to his dinner and then home for the night to get a good night's sleep and wash his driving suit so it would be fresh to go the next day. That was until the call came in at 3:45 am for a house on fire - right around the corner from his house. Jumping into his fire gear, he and the other firefighters who had been at the dinner, along with crews from surrounding towns, fough the fire until 7am, when he was able to head to the track, having gotten about 3 hours of sleep in the last 24 hours - not to mention fighting the fire. Arriving at the track around 9am, and not feeling much like racing, he was saved by the fact that the ambulance had been delayed getting to the track. Sent back to his trailer to get 1.5 hours of sleep, he was back at the car ready to race. Did I mention the rain was still holding off?
The cars lined up for the start and Chris went off in 7th and Justin in 8th - side by side. For the first few laps Chris held onto 6th but in trying to waive Justin by Chris Barry took the opportunity to get ahead. Justin followed the next lap, putting Chris down to 8th. Then came the slip up and Chris ran wide in one turn, and Frank Varano came through to put Chris back in 9th. The race settled down but Stephan Zavos in the Predator was starting to drop some oil. Justin saw this and he and Chris Barry got by, but Frank and ChrisZ got stuck behind. Chris Barry and Justin traded places at the head of the train while Stephen, Frank and Chris lurked just behind.
On the last lap, in the same turn Chris got passed by Frank, Justin made a slight error, it was just a few inches at 75 mph, but the car slid just off the track, letting the 4 cars past. By the time Justin had recovered from his spectacular save (cars don’t go well on the grass) Kevin O’Day had passed him. The race ended with Chris in 8th and Justin in 10th. Not the finish that he wanted, but considering he had never been on the track before this weekend, not bad. And we still had a race to go - or did we.
Around 2:30 pm the skies got dark and lightning struck. This is an automatic 30 minute hold. 30 minutes later another bolt and again at 3:15. By 3:30, knowing that if we did race it would be in the rain, ½ of all cars had packed up. At this time they called the racing off. We were done for the day - packed up and had an early return home. It would have been interesting if we had raced again, rain or dry. I am sure Justin is looking to get back next year and put his knowledge to good use.
