"b-mak" Drives 17th To 2nd in Five-Lap Race, Sets Fast Lap

Just a quick note for all of you who are not following the NASA National Championships at Mid-Ohio:

Today, b-mak started in second-to-last in the Performance Touring E five-lap qualifying heat race. There were 18 cars in the race. The day before (Friday) his co-driver had wrecked their car in the rain... so b-mak took the car to a super-secret body shop where it was pulled straight on a frame jig and reassembled.

Starting from 17th place, he set FTD on the way to a second-place finish. It was absolutely stirring and really worthy of some admiration.

Unfortunately, there were no vintage cars involved, unless you think a first-generation RX-7 qualifies, so it may not hold your attention... but it was a hell of a drive, and I have some of it on video from my car. I happened to qualify eighth and finish fifth, not nearly as impressive, but thanks to consistency over the wet and dry qualifying races I'll start third in the National Championship race while b-mak starts seventh.

Wishing best of luck to Brian and the other 17 drivers - jb

 

Congratulations!! So I guess this means than next time Brian is in Florida, he buys lunch. Or did he buy lunch last time.......?

 

Well done, congratulations.

 

great run! I'll buy lunch at VIR the next time!

 

That's quite impressive and quite and accomplishment. Congratulations to you both.

 

Great job! Hopefully Kimi will repeat that performance today at Monza....

 

I'll buy him a donut this afternoon. Where's the schedule? Do I have time to watch Monza?

 

Got a podium shot, Michael?

 

I haven't left yet. My fricken camera got soaked at Moto GP. I dryed it out and it worked last night. Now it won't. Trying to get my backup going. His big moment is 3:30

 

What happened? I didn't make due to the winds that rolled through here. Maybe there too. Nothing on the NASA site yet.

 

Hey, keep your chin up. There's no shame in coming second to Casey.
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Great job! Sounds like a great race---Congrats!

 

Thanks all for the kudos, that was a fun race!

Next time we'll bring our significant others!

Sounds like a plan!

I didn't have any donuts last week! I'm sorry we missed you, but you didn't miss anything at the track yesterday afternoon. That wind was nasty.

 

Oh, yeah, you probably want to know this.

Jack's calculations were off. In the qualifying races, the podium spots saw bonus points, so I started 5th and JB started 6th.

Off the start, I threaded the needle through to third. I'm surprised that the only contact I had was giving a mega bump draft to one of my fellow Honda racers. At about half distance, we had an epic full course yellow, that should have gone full course, oh, about three laps earlier...

On the restart, I had no pull on the fourth place car, which drove right by me. With two laps to go, the car started to push in all the right corners and it was all I could do to hold my position with two cars immediately behind me. So, fourth it was.

Turns out the head gasket had enough of my abuse and packed it in, which probably resulted in some power loss, and the left front tire had 5 pounds less air than where it should have been so we picked up a puncture or otherwise had a leak.

Not too shabby for a first year team that picked up a used up race car that had been sitting under a tarp for the previous three years.