OK, this was a crazy event. The Texas Motor Speedway oval is huge, driving through the tunnel is fantastic. All the race groups would run the oval with a chicane on the front straight, and the infield section off the back straight. The HPDE and TT groups would only run the infield portion, I assume for safety in uncaged vehicles. The front straight chicane would get taken out on the first lap of every session, which eventually led to the organizers widening the chicane to the point of not even requiring a lift. From entering the oval on the back straight all the way the infield off the back straight would be full throttle at top speed. This track is HARD on brakes and engines.

Saturday AM starting with a two car wreck in TT warmup, S2000 and an S550 Mustang - both very banged up. I was helping with HPDE 3/4 for the weekend. Being tied up with all those HPDE meetings and students all morning my first lap of the track was in Qual, which was cut very short due to a blown up car. We got maybe 1-2 hot laps.

There were cars touching the walls, another HPDE car wrecked - both ends this time. At some point during the day the timing loop failed, which led to a multi hour delay adding to all the other delays earlier in the day. Eventually the track gave up and used the front straight timing loop for the racers, and the HPDE and TT folks (running the infield only) would not have any timing at all. Due to the significant delays the rest of the schedule was cut short, Thunder had one 40ish minute race which Michael won, Records second, and I think our new rookie Mike Urbanski took third. Coming off the oval and into the infield on lap 1, I overcooked it big time and in an effort to avoid Records and Michael I spun it into the tire wall. Really good awareness from Records and Michael to anticipate my... mistake. With R1 being so long, I was able to get my car back to the garage and pull on it with my truck enough to get it ready for the next day before the end of the race.

Twist: Will sent out a late night email to the registrants saying that HPDE and TT would be cancelled for Sunday, and the schedule shortened to get out of there as early as possible - mandatory driver's meeting at 8AM. At the meeting Will assured us that the wrecks from the previous day are not the reason for cancelling HPDE/TT. The claimed reason was that due to the cut through on the infield, there's a very high speed corner which points cars at one of the NASCAR lights and that if one of the cars were to hit that light TMS would not be able to get a replacement in time for the NASCAR event later this year. Will also said there are two dates available for TMS in 2020 that are not in August.

Without HPDE and TT going on, everyone was able to focus 100% on racing. Warmup was uneventful for me, I was able to finally turn laps on the track. Pranav had a pretty bad diff noise and was able to R&R the whole differential assembly and gears between warmup and R2 (2 hours!), really amazing effort there and a few of the guys lent a hand where they could. Michael and I were tailing each other in Qual and were able to set some very fast times.

The standing start for R2 was smooth with me on pole and Michael second. The flagger started us pretty close to the rolling start group so it was less than a lap before we were dealing with out of class traffic. Tough, hot race where I raced Michael hard and was able to pull out a win. Felt good after a terrible Saturday.

In R2 Martin had a brake caliper failure on his stoptechs which took him out for R3. Records decided to save the fuel and sweat. Mike Urbanski started R3 on pole, Pranav second, Michael third, and me fourth. Taking the green, Michael's car killed the alternator and he pulled off. I got passed Mike and was on Pranav's bumper. Pranav hauled ass for a few laps where I was struggling to make a move while also managing water temperature, all the way up to 250F. I was eventually able to capitalize on a brake lock-up and make a pass on Pranav and hold him off for another win. The car doesn't cool very well on the oval, I think the high speeds force a lot of air over the car rather than through the radiator due to under-hood pressures.

Overall a bad/good weekend for me, looking for a body/frame shop in Houston if anyone's got a suggestion.

Who's running NOLA?

- Josh