EVERSLEY: Road America Debrief

Well it’s been two races since I last wrote in. Honestly I didn’t write an Indy report because there wasn’t much to say.

The gearbox had a part come loose internally which meant we could only shift between neutral and 4th gear so we went from running top 5 to finishing.

I flew directly from Indy back up to Toronto for some coaching at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in the Radical series for a few days before flying home. Once I was home I stopped by my apartment in Atlanta for about 12 hours and flew up to Milwaukee for some pre race media commitments I had with the good folks at Road America.

I was really honored to be asked to go an promote the entire race weekend for the local area and got to appear on three local news stations as well as ESPN Radio Wisconsin and The Racing Round Up show with Jim Tretow.

It was a lot of fun and I got to meet some really great people and definitely enjoyed my share of Spotted Cow beer!

Road America is such a gorgeous race track that I’ve been looking forward to getting to all season and this weekend we were lucky to have Katherine Legge join the squad and drive our No. 74 car.

Katherine has driven just about everything and even raced Champ Car at Road America in years past so I was looking forward to learning from her as well as helping her understand our front wheel drive civics.

We discovered another issue related to the gearbox on the test day. The car was very fast but it was extremely difficult to shift the car into gear. We had to use so much force to get the car into gear we decided to skip one of the practice sessions and change everything prior to qualifying.

It turned out it was something related to the clutch and Kyle was super pumped on the radio when we went out to qualify and the problem was fixed! We knew we wouldn’t get the pole with the straight line speed of the Cayman and the long straights at Road America but Kyle rewarded the crew’s efforts by qualifying 4th again.

Here’s where it gets bad. We take the green and Kyle and the 92 HART Civic run side by side thru Turn 1, side by side thru Turn 3, and side by side down the back straightaway with complete control and total respect from each other to give enough room.

It was fantastic racing. Unfortunately another Honda in the field had a run on both Kyle and the 92 making it three wide by trying to pass on the outside as the road kinks to the left.

To the best of the vantage point I had and from what I’ve been told by everyone involved, it looks like the No. 4 Honda drops wheels off the road and when pulling back on to the track hits the 92 and sends him into the side of Kyle and a chain reaction starts which would take out the points leaders Eric Foss and Jeff Mosing, the 92 Hart Civic and both Nissan Altima’s that run in the class. Oh and us!

No penalty. After that we had to come in several times to fix damage and we lost 3-4 laps. Considering the amount of damage to our car and how big of a hit it was, I’m absolutely amazed at how quickly the Compass360 boys got our car back out there.

In fact Kyle and I were able to turn laps on pace with the top-5 cars still in the battle which is fantastic, especially when you see the video of the crash.

It was a frustrating way to end a nice trip to Wisconsin but I have to say a major thanks to all the fans who came out. The fan forum for the 2nd year in a row was fantastic.

I couldn’t believe all the cheers we got when introduced and the amount of people who came by from social media was really warming. It was by far the highlight of my trip.

Next up is VIR where I was fortunate enough to win the last two Continental Tire Challenge races and would love to get a 3rd win for Dale! Stay tuned…