One of my favorite events of last year was when I ran with the NASA Great Lakes region at their Mid-Ohio event. Last year, it was to learn the track and practice for NASA Nationals. This year, NASA Nationals are in Utah (not going!) and NASA Northeast’s August event is at Lime Rock Park with a sound limit (not going!) so we decided to visit Mid-Ohio again for fun.

My teammate Mike Cohen and I went with the Mach-1 Performance crew. Mike had miserable luck due to being spun out of 1st place in the Saturday race and then suffering a mechanical failure on Sunday. While I did benefit from Mike’s misfortune, I had to battle 4 other Super Unlimited class cars each race and stay out of trouble. Each race had about 40 cars ranging with laptimes from the 1:40’s to the high 1:20’s.

Both races occurred on incredibly hot midwestern August days with the temperature exceeding 90 degrees. It was over 130 degrees inside the car by the end of the race, so hydration and heat fatigue were important factors each race.

Both races were fairly uneventful from my standpoint. Mike started on pole for the Saturday race with me in second. We both caught lap traffic quickly and Mike’s lead varied depending on how either one of us was getting thru traffic and where we caught the slow cars. We were both caught in a hornet’s nest of GTS cars when Mike was spun-out by a GTS3 car 2/3rd of the way through the race. I drove by and he didn’t have time to catch up and pass me again. My fast race lap was a 1:29.906 and the full race results are available here.

The Sunday race was all about pacing myself and not getting into trouble. We knew from practice and qualifying there were no cars close to our speed. The strategy was to run just fast enough to qualify on pole and win the race while staying out of trouble and minimizing wear on the car. That’s exactly what we did and the strategy worked. My fast lap of the race was a 1:29.866 and the full race results are available here.

In-car video of the Saturday race is available on the Videos page.

I also want to thank the NASA Great Lakes / Midwest region for another great event and their hospitality.

Next event is a return to Pocono North on Labor Day Weekend.