Racing Bloopers

It's 2001 and I am sharing an ITC CRX Si with Mike Fine for an ECR at VIR.

Weekend is going well and we've got the fastest car there if I remember correctly. Mike starts the race and builds what he says was a 20 second lead over the field before turning the car over to me. Once in the car and buckling up, a crew member pokes his head in the passenger window and points to two switches that need to be in the up position for the fuel pump to work. Double-check this and give him the thumbs up. 5 minutes are up and head on down pit road only to have the car die. &!!@#) ... one of the switches is in the down position (and to this day don't know how it happened). Flip it up, start the car and go. No biggie. We've got a big lead and didn't notice anyone get out in front of us.

Having a great time going through the field and see KKRR Debbie Anderson (now Buras) up in front of me and proceed to chase her down from about 12 seconds back. On the last lap we come out of the last corner onto the front straight and I am right on the rear bumper of her Scirocco. I move alongside and as we near the checker I back off just a tad as I "didn't want to add insult to injury by putting her a lap down"" thinking chivalry is not dead and all that. We passed under the checker with her about a foot or two in front of me. And she won the race.

Yep, it still comes up in conversation. I can kind of chuckle about it now.
 
At my very first race in April 1988, I qualified 20th in a 21 car field at Road Atlanta.

I knew that being that far back, the green flag would probably wave before I could see the start stand, so when I came out from under the Turn 11 bridge, I looked for the Turn 12 flaggers, saw them drop the double yellow and I took off.

I passed two cars before we got to Start. With the momentum, I passed one more before Turn 1, going into Turn 1, everyone took the inside line, I stayed outside and passed again. Woo-Hoo!

When we got to Turn 3, I was side-by-side with Jack Baxter's SAAB 99, a car that had qualified 6 places ahead of me! We continued side-by-side (I was on the left) through the Esses and when we got to Turn 5, I reached for the shift lever to downshift to 3rd and.....

Realized I was already in 3rd. In the excitement of my first race lap, I had forgotten to shift to 4th after exiting Turn 3. Jack closed the door going into Turn 5, I had to pinch the turn and lost my momentum.

Everyone I had passed got around me before Turn 6, and when I got to Turn 7, the last place car was on my tail. He drafted me up the hill at Turn 8, then passed me going into the backstraight dip. By the time I completed my first lap, I was in last place, with little hope of being able to catch up.

I didn't have any cars around me again until the leaders started lapping me. On the bright side, enough cars dropped out that I finished 7th in class and picked up 3 SARRC points in ITB.

Bob Hudson
Atlanta Region
 
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