Thanks, guys.
More than just working with not more than half throttle, our driver actually moved up several positions! When I got out of the car around 12:30 on Saturday and reported the clutch problem, we were in 17th. Per the live timing data in the tower, we re-entered the track 23rd. By the end of the day, we were back up into 17th!!!!
That guy got a serious education in being smooth Saturday afternoon.
We managed to only take two black flags all weekend, in spite of deserving more. It seems as though the corner workers were very busy or something... I took no fewer than four contacts in the 2 1/2 hours that I was in the car, but wasn't flagged for a single one. None of them were serious, nobody got hurt, and there was no damage other than a caved-in door (simple application of boot fixed that), so we feel like we did skate a bit. I'm not sure how the corner folks missed me getting t-boned at the apex of 5 (I may or may not have made a mildly optimistic move under braking...), but I shunted the apex cone 20 feet down the hill and changed direction very rapidly. Just sayin...
We drove as cleanly as possible all weekend, and I think a large portion of our finishing came from our drivers arms getting tired from waving people by in tight spots. Really, we're not going to win the race in one or two laps, so we're happy to let that chowderhead blow by us on the entry to nine and re-pass him again on the exit of 11. In fact, our team meetings consisted mainly of me reminding our team to "just let them go". It sort of became our mantra.
Hell, we beat a lot of really good cars with nothing more than a mostly-non-cheaty, cleanly driven, mostly reliable 25 year-old economy car. We're happy with that.
See y'all at Sears!
(oh, according to live timing, we were at one time in 9th for a couple of laps...)
TST, fool.It's a Bunny. With a pancake. On its head. Really, is it that tough?