Okay, so here’s the continuation from the Sonoma event…
There’s this feeling I get… when I see a course or walk it, I come up with a plan of attack. This includes line, speed, angle, initiation points, etc… this is the plan of attack that, if I could pull it off like how I imagine, would make me happy, and should also qualify me at the same time. During my qualifying lap, I got pretty close… because when I finished, it felt really good to me. I was happy. At the next drivers meeting, they announced me as a qualified driver in the Top 16 round. I think I placed #13… I was confused, because, by the way it felt, I thought I would qualify a lot higher. I found out later that it was because my feint had too much angle. If I wanted to do it better, I should use less angle on the first feint.
So that was it… I was up against Ken Gushi. On one hand, I was happy… because it meant that I could drive hard… I love driving with Ken. He’s easy to read and I can trust him. And if I lost to anybody, I’d love to lose to Ken. ANYWAY, we go out, and he leads… damn, his car is fast! He gets away from me, and his entry was way different than mine. Instead of feinting, he went straight into the corner. I, not being very experienced in competitive tandem, followed him when I should have stuck to what I knew… and I spun and went off course. Ken’s advantage. Next lap, I lead. I ditched my idea of going straight into the corner, and stuck with what I knew. I feinted. This, however, threw Ken off, and botched up his entry into turn 1. My advantage. We had to do it “one more time”… Ken lead, and I did okay following him… man… he was driving fast! I made some mistakes and I was falling behind… We went into the last left hand sweeper together, and I was coming in really hot… going towards the wall… going too fast… Ken kissed the wall with his rear bumper. I let off the throttle and I was coming in for the wall too… I got pretty close, but I missed it. After getting closer to Ken’s car, I realized that he ricocheted off the wall and hit his front end too. He busted his oil cooler and was leaking all over the place… Well, after trying to figure it out, we realized he couldn’t drive his car… so Rotora brought out Ernie’s car for him to drive. Ken seemed pretty upset… I think because of what he did to his car. Well, we went out again, this time I was leading… Ken messed up on his entry into turn 1… but as I exited and went into turn 2, Ernie’s car and its massive amounts of grip totally took over… and slung shot ken right towards me and my door. It was amazing… however, I guess because of Ken’s mistake, they gave the round to me. Next round was me against Calvin. On the first run, Calvin was having problems entering into turn 1… it looked like he or the car was hesitating to stay sideways. Anyway, he spun into turn 1, and if I was in the right mindset (like I should have been), I would have seen the opportunity to pass him on the inside. Instead, I let off the accelerator and let him get back on his course and I followed him into turn 2. It seemed like it was nobody’s advantage there. 2nd run comes, and I’m leading. I went too wide going into turn 1 and Calvin started to come in on the inside… before I knew it, Calvin was too close to me and was trying to get inside at the corner… I needed to transition to the left for the next corner… If I continued on my line, it could have meant a crash… Calvin would have been where he shouldn’t have been and I would have hit his front end with my rear end… or I could have just assumed he would get out of my way and I could just keep going anyways. It didn’t matter… my initial instincts were to avoid the accident, and instead of maintaining my line and my drift, I straightened out and got out of his way. It was my biggest mistake of the day… But it’s another hard lesson learned… I won’t do it again. Calvin took the win from that round. And now, here’s the videos!
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