I haven’t tallied it up, and frankly, I don’t need to. I already know that in the past Power Series season, I finished more races with crashed cars than in the rest of my three full-time seasons combined.
It was the disappointing result of bad luck that seemed to recur like Groundhog Day at 190 miles per hour.
Early in the season, I didn’t help my cause with mediocre qualifying runs and slow pit stops. That landed me in the middle of the field where accidents happened, including a few caused by my own impatience.
In the season opener at Michigan, I forced a three-wide move less than halfway through the race and underestimated the room between cars, which wrecked my car and collected two innocent victims. A few races later at Kentucky, I struggled to get a handle on the setup and spun early in the race.
Crashed at Kentucky — one of my many wrecks during season 10.
The next two races were cases of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A car stopped on pit road at Indianapolis and I couldn’t avoid it, and two cars wrecked just ahead of me at Pocono, collecting me in the process.
After that, we finally hit a favorable stretch in the schedule, including two road races in a four-week period, and I had my top three highlights of the season. I won at Watkins Glen — a race I badly wanted to win after being knocked out in the first turn the season before. I finished fourth (and had a blast) at Darlington in a throwback Exide paint scheme.
And I won at the Daytona road course driving a Justin Wilson tribute paint scheme, although not without some adversity. Around the halfway point in the race, a lapped car nearly stopped on track in front of me, and I took heavy front-end damage that slowed me by a second per lap.
Damaged but still victorious at Daytona driving a tribute paint scheme to Justin Wilson.
I carried that momentum into the next race at Iowa, where I finished second on a hot, slick track in daytime conditions. But when we hit the night race at Iowa, bad qualifying and bad luck struck again, and I ended up crashed after being squeezed into the backstretch wall.
The final stretch of races was truly forgettable. I got caught up in two wrecks at Chicagoland and another in Fontana. In the final three weeks, when no dropped races are allowed in the standings, I was spun at Phoenix and collected in wrecks right ahead of me at Talladega and Charlotte.
After the 18-race season, I finished sixth in points — my worst result in four full-time seasons. But while it’s easy to bemoan bad luck, I do have some reasons to be hopeful going into next season.
Although my results don’t show it, I ran better in the second half of the season, particularly on the intermediate tracks. I also seemed to take better care of my tires than some other drivers, which gives me confidence that if I can survive some longer races, I may be able to do well in them.
Wrecked at Charlotte to end the season. Should I blame the green paint scheme?
The cars themselves may change soon too. NASCAR recently announced its 2016 rules package and the Sprint Cup cars will have decidedly less downforce. I fully expect that iRacing will implement the same changes early next year.
Although I’m not a fan of his, I empathize with Tony Stewart — a former series champion who has struggled this season and been outspoken in his dislike for the current high-downforce package. My own driving style — I still need to write a blog post about that, by the way — definitely suits lower downforce cars, so the changes should be good news for me.
Finally, a longtime friend of mine, Bradley McLamb, joined the Power Series late this season and plans to run for rookie of the year honors next season. With a friend joining me on the track, that should motivate me to practice more and perform better in the races, barring a return of the bad luck.
With that in mind, for season 11, I’m scrapping my new car number style, getting rid of my green paint scheme, and removing any shelled peanuts from my house. They may be racing superstitions, but after the way the past season went, I’m not taking any chances.