Oct 20-22 at Hallett, OK

Its hard to believe but we are nearing the end of our 2023 first season with WRL. Next up in the schedule is the Mid West series Championships in Oklahoma.

We will bring the 14 car to Hallett and also get a sneak peak at our new car. The new 15 will be meeting us in Oklahoma and even get a few laps to see what she can do. Everyone is arriving Thursday to get set up and ready for a great weekend. Testing and qualifying on Friday goes pretty well, unfortunately we are still down on power, but not so bad that we aren’t competitive. The boys also managed to get a few laps in the 15 and are very excited to add her to our stable. Even better we managed to get out of the track at a reasonable hour and enjoyed a great dinner as a team at the local taco place. Not so great was finding that our home for the weekend was to be shared with a hive of drugged zombie wasps.

Despite the fight with the wasps we made it to the track and had the car on grid and ready to race. We take this time to orient ourselves to the odd 2-sided pit road. And we are on the wrong side, in order to get to the paddock we must run across pit road.

We are on grid early and ready for a good day. Nik takes the green and we settle in to a comfortable top 5 position. The track being so short lends itself to our cars set up and despite still being low on power we are much more competitive. We continue to move up in position and are now racing for the podium, racing for position not inheriting due to others misfortune feels good.

Ryan again runs the middle stint and keeps us in the fight. Somehow during yellow flags we lose laps to our class leader despite not being passed and the podium begins to slip away. With Matt in for a long final stint we manage to finish a respectable 4th, but our disappointment is obvious, we deserved better and feel it was taken from us but we cant understand what happened. During post race inspections our attention turns to Matt who is in physical distress. He was seriously dehydrated and it takes almost an hour to recover to the point that he can be brought back to the trailer.

Meanwhile the team is refreshing the car for tomorrows race where we intend to finish what we started Saturday. Brake pads are changed, fluids changed and various other minor repairs are completed before we head out for a team dinner and a return to the wasp house. Ryan refused to join us in the house and returned to the track where he will sleep in his rig. He probably got a better nights sleep at least.

Sunday morning comes and we prepare for a great day. The cars are on grid and as they begin the warm up lap we hear from Matt, “something doesn’t feel right in the brakes”. But as he gets ready to come to green he says it’s getting better, it sounds like the pads are bedding in and all should be good. The green flag falls and the race begins and then a full course caution flies and we hear Matt say, “I’m sorry”. As he went into turn 2, he says the pedal went to the floor and the car refused to stop as expected. Seconds later, after he went through the infield, he shot across the course and took out not just our 14 car, but our friends at Ginger. When the car came back to the paddock 30 minutes later it was obvious not only our day was done, but so was the car, the entire front clip was destroyed. Both us and Ginger spent a couple hours looking at the damage and eventually loaded up and prepared for a long haul home. This will be a challenge to be ready for the season finale in COTA.

Thank you to Bimmerworld, Apex Wheels, Red Line Oil, AGA Tools, Swift Spring