What a great racetrack is the first thing I can say about Road America. Unfortunately, as a driver, you’re never totally satisfied when you don’t get a victory knowing you have the tools and capabilities to do so.

Qualifying was my issue, I kept trying to time a lap to get a good run in and something always kept popping up which hurt my run. Should have been more aggressive this session, but I definitely learned from it! Qualified in 5th position.

In Race 1 I had a great battle going in the lead pack. Unfortunately, a driver who had already made contact but failed to take his safety check for 6 successive laps was doing what seemed like everything in his power to cause a collision and take the rest of the field out. It was pretty frustrating as the battling caused us to lose the draft to the top group of cars. On track I ended up finishing in 4th position. However, 2 penalties in front of me were assessed and I was promoted to 2nd position. Some might call it lucky, but I was still pretty frustrated I wasn’t able to fight for victory head-to-head.

For Race 2 on Sunday, I was starting on the outside of the front row. Everything was going well as I came out of Turn 1 where I started and was having a decent run on the track. It was all for naught though as another driver completely misjudged the brake zone into the famous Canada corner and hit me from behind as I was running P2. This brought out the full course caution but I was forced to pit from P2 since there was contact. It’s the rules and there’s nothing I can do even though my car was virtually undamaged, so I dropped to the back of the grid (16th) for the restart. I had a great restart and moved up quite a few positions. However, another caution came out immediately so 3 of our 9 laps were under caution. With the track being 4 miles long, those cautions really took a while and left me with less time to move up in the race. The final restart only gave me 3 laps to move up in the field. Overall I moved up and finished the race in 6th with some bad luck not to catch the top group. I also managed to set the fastest lap of the race which was bittersweet in the end.

The racing was crazy and there was a lot of contact and close calls all over. I feel bad for the Skip Barber staff who had to sort out the penalties throughout the event! I appreciate their efforts to make the racing as fair as possible, it’s such a close race with groups of up to 10 cars running nose to tail.

I should have more exciting news soon, stay tuned!

I’ll cut to the chase from my last race weekend at Lime Rock since I haven’t updated my blog at all.

Race 1 on Saturday, fighting for the lead, locked up into Turn 1, blew the corner and fell back to 18th. Fought my way back to 8th place in the end.

Race 2, rain on Sunday. Worked my way up from 8th to 4th place in the end. Not a bad race, getting a hang of these cars in the rain now!

Now, back to the current event! I’m out here in Wisconsin for Canada Day/Independence Day weekend racing at an incredible track, Road America. After my practice day I’m feeling good and looking forward to the rest of the weekend. The track is one of my favourites already, can’t wait for the races.

They also celebrated Canada Day here on July 1st with some fireworks. I think they might have some other event out here in the good ol’ U.S.A. in a few days, but it’s nice that they think of putting Canadians first as our holiday is obviously more important.

Ride along with me from my second practice session this morning:

Practice day is over here at Lime Rock, and boy was it a hot one. 100 degrees Fahrenheit and high humidity provided some entertaining weather later in the day for the drive home (more on that later).

It’s a fun little track, just have some work to do in a few spots and I expect we’ll be there! Qualifying and Race 1 of the weekend is tomorrow, should be a blast.

One thing I was not expecting today was a waving yellow flag for a turtle crossing the track. I’ve never even seen a turtle outside of a zoo, never mind out on a racetrack.

On the way home today we stopped to prevent damage from a hail storm, then we were put off course because of a fallen tree in the middle of a road, followed by being put off even more by an even bigger fallen tree in the middle of a road, followed by a 30km detour before we finally reached our hotel. Let’s hope for better luck tomorrow!

Qualifying and Race 1 tomorrow, let’s do this!