This past weekend John and I raced at the hot and humid barber motor sports park in Alabama. Both John and I had never been on this track before which made us have a small disadvantage. However, we learned the track quickly and set lap times in many of the practice sessions in the top 10. John qualified the car 32nd out of the almost 40 cars entered in the race. Sunday morning at 8:30AM the race started. Although the race was early in the morning it was nice to not have to race in the heat of the day. John picked up many positions and handed the car over to me around the 25th position. However, early in the race john reported that 4th gear was going bad and that he sometimes had trouble getting it into gear. Once I got in 4th gear worked for a handful of laps but then it eventually totally went out. This made me have to upshift directly from 3rd to 5th gear. Because of this I was a sitting duck on some of the early race re-starts loosing 1 or 2 positions. On top of not having a 4th gear the car also had an electrical issue. Every other lap or so the car would turn off which meant I lost valuable seconds as I tried to re-start the car. I managed to get the car as high at 8th before having to come in and pit for gas. When the race was over I was just glad the car finished and that we did not have to retire the car early. At the end of the day we finished a disappointing 17th, although with all the bad luck we had it was a alright finish.
-scott
