Homestead Wrap-Up - Rounds 1 & 2

PHEW! What an adventure!

I'm just going to start this post saying I had blast on this trip. The Ford Racing Mustang Challenge crew sure put together an awesome weekend for us. Homestead Miami Speedway is an awesome track, great combination of super technical turns and huge "go big or go home" turns. Great top notch facility that I'd love to go back to any chance I get.

So, my Dad, David Odell and I made the 12 hour drive down Wednesday in the LMI truck and trailer and dropped it off at the track not really knowing what to expect, as this was our first adventure to race in the Ford Racing Mustang Challenge series. After checking in to our hotel we made our way to the dinner choice of champions... Golden Corral. Yum. Enough about hotels and dinner choices, let's move on to the good gritty racing stuff.

Thursday morning rolls around, promoter test day, my first day on track. EXCITING! Not really knowing what to expect from the track, except what I've done on iracing.com and read on trackpedia, we decided to take it easy the first round out and sort the car, the track, and my brain. Everything went smooth and I started getting used to everything. My times weren't super great but I was learning and having a blast (the most important part!). Thursday night ended at Applebee’s, always fun with David and my Dad.

Friday… My main goal for Friday was to put down some good times in practice and then lay down a super quick lap in qualifying. Two practice sessions left us with some decent times, I ended up being 7th quick in the session before qualifying. Great, I thought, I'll get some new tires on there for qualifying and end up top 5 maybe? With a brand new set of BF Goodrich tires on the car I went out and knew I had to lay down a super quick lap within my first lap or two and I just couldn't make it happen. The whole "go super fast for one lap and pull in" strategy is new to me. I ended up not taking any time off my previous session out... but everyone else did. I ended up Qualifying 16th. Ok, I'll just have to work my way up the pack during the race. It'll be more fun. We had such a good time at Applebee’s the last night we decided to go again, this time we had one more crew member join us. Justin Stauffer flew in earlier to help out for the weekend and we all had a great time at dinner.

Alright, Saturday! My first Ford Racing Mustang Challenge race! The first practice session of the morning went great, knocking a little more time off of yesterday. I’m so excited about my first race that I can’t hardly contain myself. We go out and make our warm-up lap and return back to grid. At this point I’m so excited for that green flag to drop I’m about to lose it. The Grand Marshall sounds off and everyone fires their engines up. It’s great. I’m ready for this. We make our way around track and on to the front straight where the green flag flies. The first couple laps go great and I’m starting to get into the groove of things. I start looking for opportunities to make passes when all hell breaks loose in front of me going into turn 10. Two cars make contact and start to spin. After analyzing the situation in my head I saw that the inside line was going to be my best bet for avoiding contact. The car in front of me slid from track left to track right and I tried to jet through but unfortunately that same car didn’t stop and continued back inside to track left making contact with my left front fender. After shouting in my head for a second, I regained my bearings, told the guys over the radio I made contact and pulled into pit lane. David examined the front end and found the Lower Control Arm and steering rod were bent and it was unsafe to go back on track. That put a quick end to our day. I must have watched the video of the accident 100 times that night to see if there was anything I could have done different. In the end, I think it was just an unlucky situation. David and Justin spent a few hours working on the car getting it ready to go for Sunday. It might not be as pretty as it was when we showed up, but they got it together for me to go race the next day. Big thanks to Hyper-Sport for coming over and helping out with the LCA!

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! The last day of qualifying and racing. The last day to redeem myself! First practice session we go out and set some decently quick laps putting us at 11th of 18 cars. Not bad. So we throw a set of new tires on for qualifying and I went out and turned my personal best lap of the weekend, a 1:39:931. Great for me, but still only putting us at a 13th for the start of the race. Better than Saturday and this time we’re going to try and finish the race! After a quick morning rain shower the track was a little damp for the start of the race, but not enough to warrant rain tires. Everything about Sunday’s race was fun. I was able to pick off two positions and finish up 11th over all. I had a great time racing with Dan Aweida in the 17 car, we had several back and forth laps which was a TON of fun.

I was also very honored with receiving the GoPro ‘Setting the Standard’ Award. I was given a great big oversized check for $250 and a GoPro camera. This award was given to me for my sportsmanship at the track and dedication to the FRMC series. I just want to say thanks to FRMC, GoPro, BF Goodrich and everyone who made it possible to be at Homestead this weekend!

Got a shoutout!

Cool, got a shoutout on the new update at the Mustang Challenge Website.

"Some new names are also on the list for Homestead, including former karting champ and sprint racer Zach Lutz, who will be making his Mustang Challenge debut at Homestead"

Awesome, Let's get down there and have some fun! Can't Wait!

I'm on the website!

You guys can check out the official press release on the Ford Racing Mustang Challenge website now!

Here's the link!