The NASA National Championship event is a 4-day event inviting NASA racing drivers from all over the country to compete for the title. It moves around from year to year and this year it was at Ozarks International Raceway near Gravois Mills, Missouri. The schedule has Day 1 being a test and tune day, Day 2 has warmup and qualifying sessions, and Day 3 has a qualifying race which sets the lineup for the Championship Race on Day 4.
Nick will work on a full recap and while he's doing that, I'll share some highlights.
Day 1: Test and Tune
Two highlights from Day 1 - not a hint of motion sickness which he's previously had at this track, and he thinks he finally found and fixed the mystery oil leak!
Nick's new engine has been battling an oil leak since it was put in and so far its location had eluded him and everyone else helping him out in the paddock. Turned a few laps on the track, and applied some gasket material to hopefully seal it for real this time!
Day 2: Set those Qualifying Times
After going out for warmups, Nick was able to confirm that the engine leak is FIXED!!! Awesome!
For Qualifying Session 1, it was raining and their entire group decided not to go out. There's another session later in the day which the weather looked better for and nobody wanted to risk an incident due to the rain.
Qualifying Session 2: Got a couple of laps, but the session was short so not too many. His best qualifying time was 2:49.007.
Day 3: Qualifying Race
The Qualifying Race sets the lineup for the final race and gave Nick a chance to finally get some good laps on the car without worrying about his oil leak. He improved his lap times, with a best time of 2:46.312, but unfortunately the air filter for the engine popped off and he had to come in before the end of the race. He DID finish ahead of his friend and regional competitor Derek M who also had to come in early.
Day 4: The Big Race!
The Championship Race is 45 minutes long, which is longer than most sprint races Nick competes in which are usually 25-35 minutes. The other unusual aspect of the nationals event is that for each group there is a single race on the final day, and that's the only time you're on track. In a regional event, the racers are somewhat busier with being on the track 3 times each day. Sunday's race started at 1:30pm local time, so it was a long morning waiting for race time!
During the race, Nick was getting faster than his previous times, although he got separated from the lead pack. His times were very consistently in the 2:45 range. A full course caution came out which let him catch up to everyone. At this point he was in 9th place out of the 12 in his class when the green flag waved to resume racing.
Since he'd caught up with the pack, he was able to follow them and on the lap going to the white flag (one lap to go), he was in 9th place, a half second behind the next two in his class, and had his new personal best of 2:42.842, over 2 seconds faster than any previous lap! I was so excited for him to be doing so well!
But it took him a while to come back around for the finish flag, longer than I was expecting, and his engine sounded horrible! He was limping back to the start/finish and that let another racer get in front of him, so he finished in P10. I'll let him fill you in on the full story, but in the final lap he saw an opening and went for it! It didn't exactly work out as he hoped, and he couldn't even get back around after the finishing lap. He had to be towed back to the paddock.
BUT! Top 10! And he had a great time! Such a great group to race with. All the Thunder Roadster drivers got in for a group photo at the podium.
Now just waiting on the sponsorship from Mountain Dew! 😉
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