RacerEfrain posted on June 19, 2012 00:00
Driver Blog: Tyler McQuarrie
By Tyler McQuarrie
I arrived at Road Atlanta 6th in points and confident after the first round of the Formula D Championship. Round 1 at Long Beach went well considering it was my first time competing in the Mobil 1 Chevrolet Camaro and our first time competing as a team. We showed everyone in Formula D that we are a serious contender for the 2012 Formula D Championship. Every driver looks forward to the Atlanta event simply because the crowd is awesome and it always ends up being one of the best events of the year.
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| See how excited I was to drive the Mobil 1 Chevrolet Camaro at Road Atlanta? |
With Long Beach being a street course, it was rough on the car so the team did a great job getting the car ready to make the trek across country in time for the Thursday practice day. Formula D decided to change the track layout for the first time in nine years, so all of our data over the years has changed. Because of the track change, we spent most of the Thursday practice getting our gearing spot on. We had another short practice before qualifying and we got the Mobil 1 Chevrolet Camaro dialed in and I was ready to put it all together for my two qualifying runs.
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| This was the one moment during the weekend that our pits weren't packed. The Road Atlanta event is one of our favorites. The crowd is nuts! |
I knew the new track would be a little tricky for the judges simply because it lacked impact areas that the old track had. The one area that they focused on was the outer clip at the judge stand. To get all that right, it started back at the initiation point in turn and the momentum you carried through there, and you could carry that up to the judge stand. I focused on that for my first qualifying run but carried too much speed and went wide in turn one and this hurt my speed in to the speed zone. I nailed the rest of the track but still made that mistake in turn 1. They scored my first run at a 75.5.
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| I wasn't happy at all with how things went in qualifying. I was pretty confused by the scores, and a lot of drivers were really unhappy with the speed gun malfunction which automatically awarded speed points to everyone. |
I knew it was good enough to put me in the show and now I could push it harder on my second run to improve my score. I did just that and nailed my second run. I had a perfect line and hit all the clipping points but they scored it at a 72. I have no idea what they were thinking or watching because it was SO much better than my first run. In the end it put me in 20th and left me scratching my head. I wasn't the only one that got an odd score plus we found out the speed gun was not working so the judges ended up giving everyone speed points so my final score was a 85.5. Needless to say, there were a lot of upset teams and drivers after qualifying.