Daytona 200

First of all I lost draft, then bad-bad-bad pit-strategy and that made it all.
Jim Barisoff, thanks for the draft, that helped me to hold a bit longer in the lead lap.

Damn, I had pretty good car and ruined all by myself...

Great race. Congrats to the top-3.

You know I want to say that even though there is all kinds of stuff going on with ARCA, I absolutely have a blast racing it. I feel at home and more comfortable then I have ever been with a racing sim.

Qual: Qualed 9th which is around what I was expecting. I tried and tried to play around with grill tape during practice but the engine would start smoking after the first lap every time. Ended up dropping it to about 80 and hit the track for qual. It didn't start smoking until halfway through the second lap.

Race: That was a lot of fun. Managed to get into the top 5 after that first caution when a lot of people pitted. At the restart we were gone. I had a blast just hanging in the back of the lead pack. It was a lot of fun running with yall. Ended up catching a run coming off a turn and someone (not sure who it was) came up the track and I reacted and hit the wall. Didn't seem to damage the car all that much but I lost the lead pack. Drove around by myself for a while then 2 cars behind caught up and I drafted with them for a while. After the pit stop me and Tim hooked up and I just rode around behind him. Never could get close enough to you. I think cause of the slight damage I had on the right front. Still had fun though. We went to pit with about 10 to go and my shifter came off my table which ended up causing me to come into the pits to fast. Then the caution came out. On the restart I hit pit road (sorry Francesco I was trying to stay up to speed so you would not get a penalty). Ended up speeding again trying to stay caught up and got another drive thru. All and all I am very happy with a top-5. Think I could have had a good run with the leaders but oh well another day.

Really looking forward to the 400 next weekend!

Got some damage in the opening laps so I cruised around and tried to stay out of people's way. Finally caught Bob's draft for a few laps and that made, maybe, 0.6"/lap difference. Mr. Lilley is certainly on a roll these days! 'Grats to him and the rest of the podium.

Congrats on the win Mike.

Man what a race. My team is involved in the bigone near the start of the race and can't continue. I get an EOLL for speeding in the pits on that same yellow. I work my back up to 5th or so about 7 seconds behind the lead pack. Then make a good call on a pit stop to further advance my position, maybe even compete with the front runners and I blow my engine leaving the pits. I didn't watch the temp when I was exiting. Add another bullet hole to my foot. Darn that hurts!

Great racing tonight. And a big thanks to William and the others that helped me along the way.

William, when i tried to make qual setup I compared two-laps one with one-lap (on which one I used to qualify). Two-laps setup wasn't any faster, actually my times were even slower more than 0.1 of a second, so I decided to use one-lap setup with 100% tape.
Just step off the gas pedal after timed lap to save the engine from burning out because for me that's unfair to race from the same position which was earned with burnt engine...

First things first, my apologies to Dan White and for all who received damage on that first caution. I was on Dan's bumper drafting, we had momentum, moving to the front. We caught the leader which drifted up the track slightly entering t3. He then came back down a little, Dan lifted off the throttle and I didnt, which sent Dan into a spin. The leader did apologize over TS, but there was no need. It was way to early in the race to be worried about track position. Rookie mistake on my part. I take pride on being a clean racer. When something like this happens it makes me feel like SHIT!
On the good side of the race, I witnessed some exceptional driving. Mike Arn, Jarrod, Tom Gregerson and others. With TWO green flag pit stops and the late caution adding additional challenges. Looking forward to (S9)
Mike

First congratulations to Michael Lilley, a true gentleman and fantastic driver.

IF you had told me at the beginning of the season that I would have come 2nd in the championship I would have cried of joy: life is funny though because last night I was very upset because I thought this was the only chance I would ever have of winning one!

I knew, once Dan White was unfortunately out, that anything between a 4th place and an 8th would have gotten me the championship. If Michael had won, then a 4th by my calculations was mandatory.

Well the race I got off to a bad start when my car was very badly damaged in that initial shunt: mind you, I was not doing well in practice and did not have the fastest car out there. One of the beauties of stock cars though is that wits and strategy can really bring the races to you if you have the patience.

My teammate Bob Fay and I worked together very well and we could go all the way to the checquered flag without an additional stop (the last one) and that would have been big. Unfortunately the last yellow came out and I knew that put a dent in things. Then William pulled in to serve his penalty before the green which meant that despite my slowing down (and having the pack pull away) I still got the stop & go. Dropped to 9th.

Bottom line, it is an honor to come 2nd to someone like Michael Lilley who reminds me every Saturday night why racing is great also because of the friendships you make.

Imagine if we had only prepared just a little bit for this Fran... I came into this thinking we had no chance at anything. I never looked at the standings at all. We were too focused on the Champ Car title. So I had no clue about a possible drivers chaampionship for Francesco. My bad. But the team did come in 2nd place. S8 has been pretty good overall for CT Racing. Grats to Mike and Goulds on sweeping the points! Cant wait for S9.

Congrats on the win and the championship Mike. Goulds Pumps Racing is looking good. I`m sorry for no-show. I had the time wrong for race start but that didn`t matter anyway because the Arca auto updater doesn`t work for me. I uninstalled then re-installed like everyone is talking about and wait 30 min. for download and at the end get error downloading from server. I`m tempted to say fuck it and just delete the whole thing but the problem is, racing with you guys is the MOST fun I have on R2P period. So I don`t have much choice but to keep jacking with this piece of shit til I get it working. I tell ya, there are alot cheeper ways for me to get a headache, I could buy a $5 hammer and whack myself in the head and I would have saved $40. Arca auto update = poop.

Ditch the auto-updater and just download the files. All I had to do was uninstall ARCA, reinstall, create a profile, and then drop the updates in the root folder and update the sim. No issues.