This weekend, the race was held at Road America, an iconic track and one of my favourites on the calendar. Coming into the weekend, I had prepared thoroughly and had a lot of confidence. I felt good about my new team, Momentum Motorsports, and the car. Several weeks before, I had had my first test day with them, and it had gone exceptionally well. The car was amazing, and I was fast. So, I was expecting a great weekend.
Despite my positive outlook, I was completely wrong about the weather. On Thursday, there were tornado warnings late in the afternoon, and on Friday, there were thunderstorms. Thursday, I only had one practice session, and I was struggling with most parts of the track as I was still getting used to it. We were hoping to push harder in FP2.
In FP2, I managed to reduce my time from 10 seconds off the pace to 4 seconds off, which wasn’t bad, but it could be better. However, due to the heavy thunderstorms on Friday, qualifying was canceled, which meant I would start 10th based on the championship points.
Race one came on Saturday, and I felt very confident. However, the conditions weren’t ideal. Some parts of the track had oil (that had been cleaned up but had left powder on track) and a bit of water. The race started, and I started pushing because I had fallen off pace a bit at the beginning. Then, on lap 9, coming to turn seven, I pushed the car too hard, overcorrected, and unfortunately, I spun and had a severe crash in the wall. I hit it at over 200 km/h. The impact was huge, and I was sore at first, but I’m recovering.
It was unfortunate because the car was completely destroyed, which ruined our weekend and only got me half a race. I was so angry after it happened, and then I felt sad knowing that the car was done for the weekend. The team had worked so hard, and a mistake ended it all. I’m glad I didn’t get hurt. In racing, you always need to push the limits of the car to get the most out of it. I definitely learned those limits this weekend.
We will be back stronger and better at Mid-Ohio next month as I pursue to improve and achieve a nice top five finish!
Author: Luca Day
Luca Day is a 15 year-old race driver from Montreal, Canada competing in his first year of Ligier Junior Formula Competition.
