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DALY: Stage Two
After only two days of school on Tuesday and Wednesday I was off racing again at my second event of the season at the Virginia International Raceway.
Conor Daly  |  Posted May 11, 2009   Noblesville, IN
Teenage American phenom Conor Daly had a short school week before heading out to race in the Star Mazda series at VIR. (Daly)
After only two days of school on Tuesday and Wednesday I was off racing again at my second event of the season at the Virginia International Raceway. It was going to be a fun weekend because so many different series were there racing such as the Skip Barber National Series, the Volkswagen Jetta TDI cup, and Formula BMW. I got to see many friends I hadn’t seen a while.

I flew out with my Step Mom and arrived at the track on Wednesday evening. Luckily our RV was already parked out there because we left it at the track after the last test day. After talking with my crew and engineer for a little while I decided I needed to get some rest for the big weekend ahead.

Thursday started the first day of practice. We had three, one hour sessions. Testing the week before the race weekend looked like it had paid off because I was P3 in the first practice session. However, the rest of the practice sessions didn’t go quite as well. Everyone progressively got quicker, as did I, but not as much as everyone else. My engineer and I were hard at work trying to cure an understeer problem in medium speed corners.

I felt as though the car got better and better however the times didn’t reflect that. There were a number of reasons why I didn’t get enough good laps in the practice sessions. I caught a lot of traffic, almost always at the wrong time, or there would be a red flag as soon as I was about to turn some good laps. But at least I felt as though we were making progress on the setup.

After another night of rest in the RV it was time for two more practice sessions on Friday. The first session I thought went very well because now instead of having under steer which I normally have issues with, I had a bit of over steer. I was confident that going into the last practice session before qualifying we could set a very quick time. I went out on new tires getting ready to do a flier. I started pushing hard almost immediately.

My out lap was around half a second quicker than everyone else’s. But as I entered turn 11 going up the hill toward the “Oak Tree” turn I carried a little bit too much speed, caught the inside curb wrong, and spun into the tire wall. Luckily I hit the tires nose first and didn’t cause much structural damage. I reversed the car out of the tires and back to the pits.

Since it was very early in the session my team told me to drive back to the tent to see if they could fix the car. I hopped out and they went to work. Before I had been out of the car very long they told me to jump back in! I was amazed at how fast they changed the nose, an A-arm, and re-setup the front of the car! I got back out with around 15 minutes left in the 45 minutes session.
Conor had fun at the "Oak Tree" corner. (Daly)

Unfortunately my new tires were not so fresh anymore because of the spin and off track excursion. I wasn’t able to set the blistering time I had hoped for but I was able to gain valuable information heading into qualifying the next day.

I was really excited to qualify because I really wanted to lay down a quick time and get the pole. During the session I got faster and faster but just not fast enough… The car was okay but it really wasn’t the best it has been. Unfortunately I was dealing with under steer again. I was not able to put the power down early in the corners to get a good drive off. I ended up qualifying 6th which is definitely better than 16th in Sebring!

I could hardly sleep Saturday night in anticipation for the race on Sunday. I really just couldn’t wait to get out and do battle like I did at Sebring. Little did I know the race was going to turn out to be a minor disaster…

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