Josh made changes after qualifying and after the first race. Since he had a poor finish in the first race, he started pretty far up in the invert and was leading the race going into Turn 2. After that, there was no need to push hard and saving the tires for the third race that he would have started from last was the best plan. Also, you don't want to risk throwing the car off track pushing harder than needed. Well, other than the lap he messed up the entrance to the Bitch because he was distracted by an empty water bottle underneath his pedals. As a person who assembles safety critical flight hardware for astronauts in a FOD free lab, I'm wholly embarrassed to have missed that since I gave him the water in impound after the first race...
Anyway, if we didn't think there would be a delta in performance by going with a fresh set of tires we wouldn't have put them on. I don't think that number is a fair representation of the delta, though. If race three had been run in the dry, I think the delta between old and new would have been a little bit bigger. If the rain on Sunday morning had come without lightning, Josh would have been fine as we had rain tires ready to go. For those not keeping track, that's a set of practice tires, a set of lightly used tires, a set of stickers, and a set of rain tires brought to the track for one event. Having won my AI championship without ever owning more than one set of wheels, this seems completely nuts to me...
Richard P.
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