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Rookie Diary: Heading Toward the Championship Wire |
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Page 1 of 2 September 6. With the closest ever Mendards Infiniti Pro Series
Championship points competition moving closer to the end of the season,
by mid-August the race was still between Wade and Travis Gregg. BSR Mechanical Engineer Doug Zister, Wade and Data
At the August 13, Kentucky race Travis had closed up 13 points on Wade,
by winning the pole, leading the most laps and winning the race.
Wade’s 40-point lead was now down to 27.
After the 1.0 mile Milwaukee race back in July, where Wade qualified
3rd and finished 2nd, and Travis Gregg qualified 11th and finished 8th,
the 1.0 mile Pikes Peak International Raceway looked like it might be
another 1.0-mile track race for Wade to stretch his Series points lead.
That was not to happen, however. Travis would take the pole and
finish 3rd, while Wade started 4th and finished 5th. It was
Wade’s lowest finish of the season. Travis picked up 6 more
points. Wade’s lead was down to 21 points.
What happened at Pikes Peak? The biggest excitement for the
fans occurred on the start. The starting order was Travis Gregg,
Jeff Simmons, Jaime Camara and Wade, in that order. Wade had the best
view and insight, so it’s best to let him tell it.
“I got a good jump on the start from 4th. I was pretty sure Jeff
was going to go for the lead, so I was eager to try to tuck in behind
him. I had a better start than Jeff so I tried Turn 1 on the high
side, so we went three-wide [Travis, Jeff, Wade] all the way through
Turn 1 and 2, well just to the exit of 2. Because of the people
on the inside [Travis and Jeff], you have to start bringing it
down. So I had to lift off the throttle a little bit and Jeff
took the lead and I’m pretty sure Travis and I were two-wide through
Turn 3.”
“And then sanity kicks in a little bit and says you don’t really need to be doing this right now!”
“So I just slipped into 3rd as a comfortable position and we ran 1-2-3 pretty much in a line for 30 odd laps, maybe even 40.”
“On about lap 50 we came up to lap Tom Woods. Jeff got around him
in about 5 laps. Then Travis was struggling, it looked like,
behind him [Wood] and I was sitting there basing my race on what Travis
was doing. I was quite comfortable and I was just hanging back
out of the draft taking it easy.”
“Unfortunately, then we just developed a bad vibration in the rear and
no one could see what was going on from the pits. I assumed it was one
of the tires delaminating, so I just slowly backed out of the throttle
in mid-corner to put the least load on that tire. I thought it
was the outside tire at the time. So, I was just easing up on the
corners and slowing my speeds down.”
“But the vibration just kept getting worse and worse, so I just kept
slowing down more and more. Eventually the whole car was shuddering and
it upset the rear of the car in mid-corner. It would like vibrate
the rear of the car out and keep the whole car rotating through the
corner. It was pretty tough to drive it. I thought that at
any moment one of the tires was going to explode. I was so
worried to keep my speed down.”
“I was still 3rd with 20 odd laps to go, but I could see people
catching me pretty quick. I’d slow down about a second a
lap. I saw Nick Bussell was reasonably quick and I figured that
at the rate he was catching me he’d be catching Travis at something
similar. So I let him go. It paid off for me because he did
pass Travis [moving Travis into 3rd] and the big jump in the points
from 2nd [if Travis had been able, from 2nd, to later pass Simmons for
the lead and win] was taken out, so it really didn’t do a lot for the
championship.”
“So we came home with my worst result of the year, but it was clear we
were quick enough to run in the top three. It was better than the
worst case scenario, so I’m not too upset. I still
have a reasonable lead. It could have been a lot worse, I think,
so I’m happy and confident going into Infineon.”
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