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This week has the Late Model racing at South Boston, and this was a great opportunity to get my four races done (that will allow me to get my oval C licence).
I had been waiting a long time to get into a Late Model race so was really eager to get started! Qualifying was tough, and I hadn’t had a lot of testing with the car or the track, so my qualifying time was really off the pace. I managed a 16.2 whereas most people seem to get 15.9 or 16.0 without much effort (not sure how yet!).
I joined a low strength of field race (as it gave me car #1) and was starting 7th of 13th runners.
The race was a total blast! It had the potential to be a wreckfest as the track is really small (0.4 miles), and the turns come around really quickly. The straights are over before you realise it! I had a cautious start, and was even bumped nastily going into turn one! I dropped back to 8th before getting comfortable and starting to reel in a few cars.
I managed a few passes for position and worked my way up to fifth place, with some great side by side racing along the way.
Towards the end of the race I really started honing in on 4th placed runner at a really fast pace – I can only assume his tyres went off and mine were still there. It was really good fun taking huge chunks out of his lead with each lap, but alas there weren’t enough laps to really catch him.
An amusing end to the race was seeing the second place runner spin on the very final corner of the 50th lap and go down from 2nd to 5th – catch this and the rest of the highlights in the video below (using fraps for the first time).
I managed a fourth place finish and incident free – the Late Model is an excellent series.
Race Results (iRacing members only!)
