AER Race Report, Day One

Well, that could have gone better!

We qualified third of forty-one cars. At the start, I made some reasonably aggressive moves to take first place. After the first lap I was already 1.6 seconds ahead of the next car.

I held first place for about half an hour and set what would be the second-fastest lap of the entire race but I was unable to keep the RX-7 running consistently at that laptime. After 50 minutes the front main seal blew, oiling our rear tires and putting us in the pits for nearly five hours. We also had to swap a belt and fix a radiator leak. Matt went out for a while to work out the bugs in the car. Then we sent Mark out to take the checkered flag.

We definitely had a solid shot at a podium today so it was a disappointment. The good news is that although both Matt and Mark went off-track nobody was hurt and we're ready for the start tomorrow morning. Travis and the Jalopnik team also broke down. In the end we both finished in the back half of the race --- we were 31st, Travis was 27th. So much for the rivalry!