Have you ever had one of those days where no matter what you did, everything just went completely wrong?  And it is so bad that even the people around you start to struggle too?  We had one of those days not too long ago.  It was sort of the opposite of the story I discussed in Second is the First Loser.  It is strange how a day that started out so promising could end so badly.

After having a couple of decent practice sessions, our driver went out for qualifying and promptly put our number towards the top of the scoring pylon.  We all felt confident in the driver and our piece at the start of the race.  But those feelings of confidence soon faded.

Right from the outset of the race the driver let us know that the handling wasn’t to his liking.  We fell to around mid pack before a series of pit stops would bury us for the day.  After getting penalized for a pit road violation and making the wrong adjustment during a stop, we found ourselves a lap down.  A pretty significant hole to climb out of to say the least.  We were fortunate enough to get the lucky dog soon after, but it wasn’t enough to turn the tide for us.  On a subsequent caution, our driver didn’t come to pit road when instructed to do so by our crew chief.  I knew we were in trouble after that.  We were deep in the field at that point, and being involved in two wrecks in the closing laps of the race would send us packing.

We came home with a torn up race vehicle and a bad finish.  Not to mention an upset driver and a livid crew chief.  It was a perfect example of the saying “you can’t win the race on pit road, but you certainly can lose it.”  I felt bad for everyone involved, because if we had done our job, our race would have ended up a lot better.

When races like this happen though, you have to learn from your mistakes, hope you don’t get fired, and move on.  Because (I’m going to end this with a cheesy quote) there is always next weekend, and anything can happen on any given Sunday (or Friday, or Saturday for that matter).

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