Gingerman Redemption - Apocalyptic Racing

The Apocalyptic Racing journey began at Gingerman in 2012 with a spectacular series of failures well documented by Judge Phil. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a1873 … ne-blocks/

It is therefore appropriate that we came full circle with the overall win this past weekend at Gingerman with two of the original team members present and somewhat ironic that the MR2 of Rod Throwing Fools that we held off for the win in 2019 was parked next to us in 2012 and the car builder Marc was instrumental in our 2012 antics and has played a role with Apocalyptic ever since.

The build up to this race was chaotic with a last minute work trip to Turkey for me, the car owner, resulted in taking the car from St Louis to Chicago a week prior and storing with our friends at The Wonderment Consortium then picking up Friday of the race weekend and heading to Gingerman hoping to make tech. A delayed flight and missed connection in Munich put the whole weekend at risk but I managed to get the last seat on the next flight and eventually get to Chicago where Monty handed off the trailer close to ORD. I finally made it to the track around 9pm Friday with the anticipation of racing keeping the jet-lag at bay. A few Rakis and other beverages and fresh Baklava with the team allowed for race planning and a good nights sleep.

We teched early Saturday morning, thanks John Pagel for the flexibility, and prepared to race. I figured with the time change it was best I went first as my body clock was still on late afternoon Istanbul time. I had a clean and fun stint and was approaching our pit window when the second place car LandShark blew up and got well off track but still left enough oil on the track to cause a full course black flag with a 30 minute delay in the paddock. This could not have happened at a better time for us as we had just cycled into the lead with the former leader having just pitted and we got to make our first stop in the paddock under black flag conditions.

Nick went in next aiming for a 3+ hr stint to set Mark up for the final stint meaning only one green flag stop for the day. Nicks 2 lap lead was slowly eaten away by the faster teams with Rod Throwing fools taking the lead until they had to pit and Flying Pigs in the Honey Badger chasing hard. Nick brought the car home in the lead but we lost it with the pit stop. Mark was able to put down super fast times and clawed back into the lead as some of the faster teams suffered black flags and additional fuel stops. We finished the day in the lead by two laps and set about checking the car over and then joined the awesome Pot Luck dinner hosted by Rust Belt Racing where our Hot Wheels replica placed second equal.

We thought his may be an omen as the short day on Sunday negated our fuel strategy advantage and both Rod Throwing Fools and Flying Pigs had been consistently quicker on lap times all day Saturday. We put Nathan in first, he was part of the team when we won class B and has had two other class B victories with his own team Priority Fail. Nathans goal was to try and not give too many laps back and keep it clean. He not just kept it clean but was able to only concede the initial pass and stayed on the same lap as the MR2 for the session.

Our pit and driver change was slower than we hoped and we lost a bit of time to Rod Throwing Fools and eventually conceded the lead, Bill had a wee off resulting in a black flag and our heads were down as the win seemed out of reach. He settled in to defend 2nd from the Flying Pigs and Wisconsin Crap who were both on a two stop strategy when luck came our way again. The MR2 suffered a 4 off black flag putting us back in the race but still a little behind then with one hour to go The MR2 was involved in contact resulting in a 2nd black flag and driver change this put us back in the lead and Bill maintained it to the end.

I'm still buzzing over the win, we were 13th fastest and were able to once again race with friends that we have been racing with for many years as well as making some new friends. It really doesn't get much better than this!

Well done Blake and Team on the Class B win and Ultra Depends on the Class C win.

Our next race is Topeka in August, word on the street is entries are a bit low so please sign up and come race with us. I would hate for a track so close to me to be a one and done!