Thompson Debut

For the last race of the season I would find myself at the famous 5/8 mile oval, Thompson speedway. The track I grew up around, and dreamed to be racing at one day. During the 2011 World Series of racing weekend I would achieve this goal.
The weekend got a damper start, when Friday's activities would be cancelled due to rain. This meant I would have no heat race, and limited practice to be ready for the race. On Saturday morning, before practice I would get coaching from Dan Meservey once again, to help me learn the track before I turned my first laps. I felt confident when I hit the track. The first 6 laps of practice went as planned. I was turning laps and getting use to the track. Going down the back stretch on lap 7 I felt the car to shudder. I quickly tried to figure the problem out but I was unable to and the car would just shut off. I had to be pushed back to the pits and hope we could find the issue.
After going thru the engine we discovered the distributor cap went bad. We switched it out with a spare and the car started but was not right. Next we would find out the distributor was bad. Now the next task was to find a distributor. Eventually we found a mini stock driver who wrecked his car and took his engine out to put into another car. We asked to borrow their spare and they let us use the distributor for the reminder of the race day.
Due to the distributor issue I would miss all the practice laps available and would have to jump right into the feature. This wasn't anything new to me. I had to make my Monadnock debut with 0 laps on the track as well. To be ready I would watch the rest of the races on the track and get focused. To be smart I would start last place in 17th for the race.
On the start I would not hold back and climb up into the 15th spot. I quickly started to try to maneuver my way around the 14th and 13th place cars driving up beside them several times. It wasn't till around half way till I would pick up 14th position. Right after I made the pass the caution came out for a spun car. I would have to give up 14th and slide back into 15th. Right on the start I would hold my position and started to make my move to get around the 75 and 86 cars. Coming out of turn 2 on lap 14 the 75 and 86 got together spinning into the infield. This would bring out another the caution.
I would restart in 13th place. On the start I would lose a position to one of my mentors, Mark Giordano. I quickly tried to get back around him. I had a few chances but I was never successful. In the end I would have to settle for 11th place. I guess the teacher didn't teach me everything.