I can’t be more happy and proud than I am right now! I am honored to be the one who was picked for driver of the year award!
All season I drove hard, tried my hardest and did not expect to get the driver of the year award, with only being 3 months into Spec Miata Racing. I am so grateful for this year with NASA Great Lakes and their great series and can't wait till 2023.
Thank you to Jay Andrew , Nasa Staff & HPDE instructors including Chris Losiniecki, Tim Fokine, Derek Mortland. Also big thank you to Dan Williams for believing in me and giving me the opportunity to obtain my competition license at 13. Another big thanks to Nathan Nicholson who has helped coach me since I started at Nasa and helped me improve my driving, I can't thank you enough. Also the biggest thanks to my parents who gave me this opportunity to do what I love to do the most, without you guys I wouldn't be where I am today.
Here is the recap of my weekend at the National Corvette Motorsports Park!
Day 1, Friday. It was practice day not much to really say about it, although I did do the 3 hour TREC race with Tyler Wettengel and we got 1st in our class and 2nd overall out of 24 teams.
Day 2, Saturday. the first race day. During morning practice I found a lot of time. It was qualifying time and I had the pace for top 7 but due to a driver blocking I did not get a very good lap, still ended P11 out of 18. It was time for the first race, I had a great start gained a spot and had not body contact, was off big time and made mistakes to end the first race in P11. Now it was time for the second race where I started 10th ended up finishing 9th, in the top ten!! I was happy with top ten. Later that night we went to a banquet to watch awards and I got picked for driver of the year!! We also got to explore the corvette museum which was really cool!!
Day 2, Sunday. which was a fun day to end the season. We were combined with a group called thunder and lightning. I showed good pace in practice not being to far off. Now it was time for the race that we had over 60 cars, some different. In my class Spec Miata, we had reverse grid where I started 6th out of 12. I had a good start, got up to 3rd and by the 3rd lap I took the lead. My minor mistakes allowed the 2 fast drivers to catch me and they got around me. I kind of kept up with them, when we went full course yellow for a lot of laps then after it we had a restart. We had one lap to race, other cars from the other groups spun out in front me in the first turn, then we all checked up. The car behind made a clean move and got around me and by that time I needed to get back around him, but ran into lap traffic when I was passing him. So I was forced to back out not to hit him. I finished P4 although I really wanted P3, but know I have all of next year to fix my mistakes.
Overall it was a good weekend I learned a lot. Thanks to my mom and dad for all the support, Beckie Collins and Cory Collins for the help during the TREC race and for the support all week. Good job to Nathan Nicholson, Wyatt Wood and Chris Finnigan on your championship awards.
Today is NOT my last race weekend in my Miata. I will continue my journey driving at other Nasa regions so that I can continue to gain more experience for the next few months.
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