Hello everyone- Well, Mid-Ohio definitely showed what kind of a difference just one lap can make. We’d opened the weekend pretty solidly-top four in two of the three practices. Then the rain made qualifying a bit of a lottery, and we ended up taking eighth on the grid. But that only lasted until the first corner and I had to do some driving in the grass to avoid the mess ahead. By the time I was back on the track, I was way way back in the pack and on the back foot. After doing the first stop and getting on to the red tires, were working on pushing our second pit stop as far into the race as we could. The team was telling me “pit this lap” right when I saw that Ryan Hunter-Reay had spun in turn 12 and I was hoping to get into the pits on the exit of turn 12 before they closed them…but no, the pit closed light came on before I could make it. If we had made it into the pits ahead of that yellow, we’d have been right there with Scott Dixon. Im not sure we had his pace but the track position would have been nice. We were so close on the fuel that I had to take a splash during the yellow to make sure we could keep running. Then I came back in once the pits opened for a full service. As a penalty for pitting while the pits where closed, I had to let RHR-the guy who caused the yellow-by! So it goes, those are the rules... Being so far back at that point, we thought the only way we could make a leap in the order was to pit on lap 60 and hope that a yellow came out. Unfortunately, after I ran hard for a few laps, it was clear that Mid-Ohio was back to not having yellows, so I had to slow way down to even make it to the finish. It was tough to drive so slow. It was frustrating, but we had taken some chances and they just didn’t pay off for us. The guys worked hard and it could have been a much different day, but for us, now it is on to Milwaukee next weekend! Thanks as always for following. Justin
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:37:35 +0000
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