The saga of the weekend was that of Chris and Michael in Mod Front, looking for their turn to shine.  Chris has built a fire-breathing dragon of a Golf and of course he’s still sparked full of ideas to make it faster yet.  The pair shared the trip, with Gallant supplying the tow-rig and new enclosed trailer.  Zanis knew he’d created a competitive car due to his lap times against some stiff competition at NER events.  With a little foreshadowing Zanis was truly worried about co-driving, knowing he had a formidable opponent with Gallant, but the team was required for a successful foray into the national’s fray. It’s quite an undertaking.

The high’s and lows of having one shot and blowing it…

The pair were both in the dumps after Saturday, with Gallant being too cautious learning the car and Zanis sending it maybe a touch too hard. They sat in 4^th and 6^th respectively after Saturday.  And then the rain came. All night the storms raged and over an inch of rain fell.  Passing showers on Saturday had just primed the dirt to accept the the rest and it created SUCH a sloppy mess of a course.  The kind of day when you want blocky tires and all your weight over the tires doing the work. With Zanis having nothing to loose, and Gallant’s tempered consistency being a perfect fit for the conditions, coupled with excellent mud tires the two went to work on the field and catapulted themselves toward the front with each passing run on Sunday.  In the end Gallant squeaked out a win by just under half a second with 2 seconds worth of cone penalties included and Chris clawed up to 3^rd just under 2.5 seconds off the win with 6 seconds of cone penalties!  What a fight.

And then there was my trip…

Last year was awesome, but it became evident that not only were more tires needed, but to compete with Peter Dozeman and Brianne Cornne of Texas would require freedom of movement and tools not afforded to the ‘clinger on’ of a two car trailer/truck setup.  So I put together a program for the season back in April that took me to PA, VA, OH, MO, and finally IA competing.  The truck, trailer and racecar stayed in a few safe-houses along the way – you know who you are and THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!  This seemed like a great idea, and was really the only way to make it all happen but it required some serious effort this spring as I did basically a year’s worth of development to the car in a couple months, and then went for it. Simply making the timelines work for each event became more challenging than the racing at times and over time the lack of time to fix things created some serious challenges.

Heading into the parking lot for Nationals the tow rig had no rear brakes, the race car was not starting, and it had blown front struts.  Luckily we got it started before tech inspection closed and thought we were in business until Saturday morning when, you guessed it, it wouldn’t start again.  With zero time to spare to get it onto grid it finally started and in my haste to find reverse I threw it in with the revs high. Somehow that managed to move the shift-forks in the trans such that I only had reverse available!  So, I drove the ¼ mile and through the maze of grid in reverse and got to work. 

The comradery of Nationals was awesome. When I didn’t fix it in time for the first run, a fellow racer offered up his Toyota (they don’t break apparently) and kept me in the running.  At the end of day one I was in second place, but as you already know, the rain had different plans for Sunday.  Even with 4 sets of tires, I still didn’t have the right tires for that amount of muck and I watched Brianne and Peter put 4+ seconds per lap into me on Sunday and ended up 3^rd.

That said, 3^rd still felt like an amazing accomplishment after the adrenaline of nearly DNSing the entire competition Saturday morning!

Now, onto 2020 nationals…