Wheels of Thunder.................

I kept it on the down low until it was official, and at 10 PM on Friday night I received the email from Yvonne tagged "Temporary Licence". So its for real now. I'm tagging along with the SM3's. First off I have to just say that all the grief that the ACA gets is absolute nonsense. This lady received my upgrade request on Friday and had it turned around later that night. Now that's dedication, these people have lives and sometimes we take what they do for us, and our sport for granted. I know I have been guilty of that for sure!

Well all the pressure of getting the upgrade is off now, so the plan was to go into the Wheels of Thunder Circut/Crit and just hang on. This was my 5th race in 8 days so there where no expectations, and honestly I just wanted to get through it without getting popped. There were 7 VC dudes lined up at the start, Jared, Casey, Marty, Lance, Brent, Jimmy (one of those super fast 45+Master guys) and myself. We were Scheduled for 20 laps on a 2 mile circut. The race pace I found wasn't all that fast, so I moved to the front, and tried to hold position, typically in the top 6-10, to avoid the dreaded accordion effect, and resultant sprints out of every turn. I did get caught in the swarm a couple of times, and just got out into the wind on the outside and moved back up into my position. Casey was active during the race he tried to work a couple breaks, and I tried to get some blocking going for him with Ertz, but nothing was gonna stick, it was too windy, and didn't seem like people were all that motivated. I tried to bridge a 3man break at one point and felt a match start to light, so being my first 3s race and anticipating that the pace would eventually pick up I decided not to waste any energy. In fact after all the racing in the past week there wasn't much of that to spare anyways. With 3 to go I gelled up and moved up into position, I didn't want to wait until the last lap to get on the front, as that is prime real estate, and everyone I'm sure was going to be digging for those top six spots going into the final lap.
This turned out to be for the best, as there was a big pileup on the last lap going through the chicane (s-turns). Casey and Brent moved up also, and it was shaping up to be a lead out for B at the sprint. Casey was hauling, Brent was following, and I was riding just outside his wheel on the right to make sure he didnt get boxed in from the wide side. In hind sight it may have been a better plan to get up and help Casey with the lead out. Next time, I'm sure our teamwork will improve as we race together more. So there we were sitting 3rd 4th and 5th wheel going into the downhill sprint to the finish. As we rolled through the sweeping left to the straight away, the pace picked up, and the full out sprint was on. I had absolutely no legs to sprint, and thats no good on a drag strip like that, Brent rolled a 5th, Casey 10th, I cruised in in 16th, Marty 18th, Lance 21st, and unfortunately Jared got caught behind the crash, and rolled in without a scratch, but had some white knuckles going on. All in all a very nice day for VC in my books. I placed way above my expectations, and had an absolute blast out there with the rest of the guys. Looking forward to some good teamwork in the up coming races, and learning how to ride with these guys.

Now there has been some talk after the race regarding the pace, the crash, and who or what was responsible. I cant spend any of my energy on that, so I am just going to leave that to the others who can. I'm just grateful to be able to race my bike, and that those IC3 guys put on such a good race, with some good eats afterwards. And above all, no one was seriously injured. Scrapes and bones will heal, broken carbon can be replaced. This is all a part of the sport we choose to participate in. See you at the RACES!!!!