Team Nein Blinker LDRL CMP 2023 Recap
A great #racelucky event at CMP like always! We had a blast. Big thanks to the Nein Blinker Team, our support system, the Lucky Dogs crew who fly across the country to put these events on and the volunteers who help make it happen.
Wasn’t the weekend we had hoped for. We knew to expect a few bumps as we were breaking in a lot of new stuff. In the end we had some really high highs this weekend, but also some really low lows.
Saturday started with rain, normally a strength for us. But with the new setup we definitely weren’t as stable in the rain as we had been in the past. Still, we were gaining some positions. As the rain stopped as were getting even faster and climbing well into the top 20. Unfortunately trouble during pits with our new harness set us back, our stops were particularly slow. It was an issue we didn’t really figure out until Saturday night. We finished mid pack overall and in class. Still we ran much faster, picking up 3+ seconds a lap over our September times.
Sunday started off better. We had a strategy and by mid morning it was paying off. We were running 10th overall and 3rd in class. We had 2 of our fast drivers on deck and a opportunity to really battle at the end of the day, putting the new setup to work.
Then, about 30 minutes before the end of the 2nd driver stint we got hit by another car that locked up in the corner coming on the front straight. They hammed our passenger front fender and tire. They went 90 degrees and went off track. The other driver did a great job of minimizing the potential impact, but it wasn’t enough to save the contact.
The contact knocked our toe and camber off (likely something bent on the strut, we’ll have to see) and pushed a line off the steering rack. We dumped a lot of steering fluid, but likely the incident occurred near pit entrance so we didn’t put much on the track. Thanks to our team, we rallied, got an eye ball alignment and reattached the steering rack line and filled it up with fluid. Got back on track after about 45 minutes. At that point we had dropped to 38th. There was no chance we could regain our position.
We went out and ran the rest of the day, including running some really fast lap times for us. The eye ball alignment was shocking good, and despite the damage we had a great day. With about 30 minutes left our 4th driver had a spin that ended in minor contact with the barrier. At that point, with nothing else to drive for we decided to call it a day before we did any further damage.
A big thank you to our sponsors ShiftAtlanta and Shift Brokers. To follow along with the Team Nein Blinker team checkout our Facebook page and read all of the articles about our build, races and movement between series.
UPDATE 2/28/23 – Added the video of the contact.
