(Last) Weekly Roundup: Failure To Proceed Edition

It was a bit of a heartbreaking weekend. We had everything we needed to take two wins at NCM Motorsports Park: the fastest car, the strongest driver lineup, a cadre of volunteers who could do everything from lift a fuel jug one-handed to swap a water pump in minutes. Sure enough, we were in first place by nearly ninety seconds at the 7-hour mark of Saturday's 9-hour race. Then the overheating problems began --- and they persisted through Sunday. By 5:30 that afternoon, all we could do was send Danger Girl out for the checkered flag, knowing that we'd barely managed enough completed laps to avoid being classified as a DNF.

On the positive side, we made some great friends and enjoyed some good times to go with the bad. I also had a chance to qualify a competitor's car, which has to be one of the odder things I've ever done in racing. (The fact that I qualified the car ahead of ours was just the icing on the proverbial cake.) Marilyn the MX-5 Cup Car and her friends will be back in October for the AER event in Mid-Ohio. There's a lot of work to be done, and a lot of money to be spent, between now and then.

For Hagerty I drove a 220-horsepower, K20-powered Fiat X1/9 and interviewed the people who made it.

At R&T, I told you the story of the only 1983 Corvette.

The comment-meter at TTAC went into the danger zone when I had the audacity to suggest that American cars could cut the mustard in overseas markets.

This week I'll be sharing a few interesting race cars with you and maybe telling the story of how we came to lose that race in more detail...