Dartford, England (October 27, 2007) – The Formula Palmer Audi Autumn Trophy officially started today with 3 rounds of practice at Brands Hatch. My goal was to progress every time I went out on the circuit. I knew the Indy circuit at Brands Hatch was going to be tough, but I did not let that stand in my way. Every session was progress, and by the end of the day I was happy where I finished up.<\/p>\n
Saturday morning came early with a short warm up. New tires went on the cars this morning which would remain the only set for the whole weekend. With all of this in mind Pat and I only did a few laps to warm the cars up before the first round of qualifying. The key to a fast time was trying to get a clear lap. With a fast lap being in the 44-second range, circuit length at 1.2 miles, and 22 cars gives a very congested qualifying session. In Q1, I had a lot of traffic and my fast lap was done avoiding another car at the apex of a corner. During Q2, I was right on pace with series champion Tim Bridgman. A small handling issue hampered my overall speed, and I ended up 8th when the session ended. Temperatures cooled down for Q3, and I made a small set up change trying to improve the handling. In the end, the change was not what I hoped for and came into the pits to put the set up back to the original position. When I went back out on the circuit, a red flag appeared due to a car in the sand trap. This ended up being the conclusion of the session and the day.<\/p>\n
Both Pat and I qualified in the top ten only a few positions apart from each other. I gained a whole second today in my overall lap time which showed that I am coming to grips with the circuit and car. Tomorrow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s races are looking to be under wet conditions and will present a new challenge. Even with that, this has been a great learning experience so far because the situation makes a driver go out and get the job done right away. Since the program got under way, I have to thank all the supporters of the Team USA Scholarship for giving me this opportunity. Driving in this different environment presents a new level to raise my game. The competition this season is very good, and I would have it no other way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dartford, England (October 27, 2007) – The Formula Palmer Audi Autumn Trophy officially started today with 3 rounds of practice at Brands Hatch. My goal was to progress every time I went out on the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":54,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1165,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions\/1165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/54"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}