I can’t believe my 2011 rookie season is over in the Playboy Mazda MX-5 Cup.  The last race of the season was held at Road Atlanta in Braselton, GA for Petit Le Mans.  Words can’t even describe the atmosphere at Petit.

Since the atmosphere is so different at Petit Le Mans and there are fans everywhere it brings a whole new level of intensity in the air.  I have a new love hate with Road Atlanta because of my wreck earlier in the year in turn 3.  Racing at Road Atlanta for 10 years has given me numerous laps around the track but your brain never forgets where you have wrecked.  It is like trying to give your brain and override so that you don’t allow yourself to not take that one certain corner just as hard as you do every other corner.  One of the biggest challenges I have faced all year is just learning car control and not over correcting once the car starts to step out on me.  Unfortunately a task I have been faced with all season was being one of the slowest cars in the series.  Being behind the wheel of my race car is my world and no one can come in the way of that.  However, with that being said I find it to be really discouraging to pick up quite a bit of time each session and still not see myself moving up the timing sheets.  I took the 2011 season to learn every aspect of the car and to get as much seat time as I could to better myself.  This season was an eye opener and boy was Petit Le Mans my break out race!

Petit is a whole week event.  Load in was on Monday and Tuesday was a promoters Practice day.  The official practice sessions were on Wednesday followed by qualifying on Thursday.  Our race was first on Friday morning!  I was pretty sure when I woke up to start getting ready for the race our pace lap would be with our headlights on!!!  We head out onto the track at exactly 8am, complete the one pace lap and we are off!  In the back of my mind the whole weekend was the fact that I only 2 points ahead of the competitor behind me.  I had to finished ahead of him to finish 8^th in the final season points.  The race started really well and I had two people I was racing with!!  Drove the best race of the season and I beat the guy and finished 8^th in points!!  A hard fought race with a HUGE sense of pride at the end for me!

Watching the ALMS cars felt inspirational!  The cars were entering turn 1 at 151 mph and going up that hill at such a high rate of speed.  No tracking out and no bobbling was coming from the cars!  It was amazing!  I just watched in awe of what I was seeing.  There are so many things to learn from being at events with big series such as Grand Am and ALMS.

I never imagined what my first pro season would be like but it was a BLAST!  A large number of ups and downs but we learned so much and can’t wait to see what 2012 will be like for us!  Stay tuned and I will keep you posted!!!