SPA 24-Hour Race, Aug 6-7, 2016

There are times when the celebration is all about the victory; but, there are also times when celebrations are about team work, endurance, and perseverance. This latter case can best describe our team's Audi R8 at Spa and we are celebrating. The team started P24 in a field of 38 and finished P14. While Andy was the picture of consistency, JC and Rick took opportunitie

s to "fix" (JC's term) the car's aerodynamics using a FGT, a couple of walls, and maybe a guard rail or two! Still though, the car remained competitive all day, set lap times similar to the leaders, and we got as high as P10! By the end though, every car running hard some damage - we were just a little slow down the straights.

Andy turned the most laps w/ 195, JC did 189 (nearly all of them in the wee hours), and Rick did 158. JC didn't quite achieve his incident goal of 1000, but he did collect 269, Rick got 99, and again... Mr. Consistency, Andy "the Machine" Banfield got only 69! Maybe the best new? Most of us kept our A license!

All in all, I think that once we got past the initial disappointment, it was fantastic just hanging out together, persevering through the setbacks, and enduring... And that's what we did together, with some encouragement, and laughter along our journey.

Regarding our Mercedes AMG GT3 team, Dave gave a quick update and it seemed like we heard something about a chicken crossing the road, getting run over, and doing some catastrophic damage to both the Merc engine and chicken. Chickens in iRacing? Weird… For those who didn't get to participate in the Spa 24 Hours race... You missed it! It was a blast and we should always appreciate the fantastic, family-oriented atmosphere Ted has created with vApex Racing Group. We've got a great team guys!

We'll get 'em next time...