Matt McMurry's column: Lites relief

This update is about my first IMSA Lites podium finish – at Road America, the same place I got my first Formula Skip Barber podium in 2012. School started back up, so it's nice to actually have a few weeks in between races, after a summer where I travelled for racing on 54 of the 82 days!

I hope you enjoy watching my narration of a lap around Road America in the JDC Motorsports Elan DP-02...

It was a weird weekend for sure. Good weird. But still, weird. The podium came in race two, where I drove from 10th on the starting grid up to second and only finished a half second out of the top spot.

What was weird was finally getting my first Lites podium from my worst qualifying position of the year. I've had podium speed all season. Usually, I start in the top five. And usually, something bizarre – and frustrating – has taken me out of contention.

In fact, of the 10 races so far, I've had four mechanical DNFs – including one while leading with nine minutes to go at Mosport three weeks ago – and four times I've been crashed or damaged by others. It's been maddening, and for a while at Road America I thought it was happening all over again.

After being second or third in each practice session, I was pumped for qualifying. I had started on the front row at Mosport and felt the same was in the cards again. On the out lap of qualifying for some yet-to-be-determined reason, my car only provided 300 psi of brake pressure entering Canada Corner. Normally it would give me upwards of 1000 psi. There was no way to get slowed down. I went into the kitty litter and fortunately didn't hit anything.

The session was red flagged, which meant that after I got pulled out and got back to pit lane, I only got three laps for qualifying. I ended up seventh overall, which wasn't bad considering the circumstances that included my fastest lap being excluded for causing the red. So, I only really had two laps to qualify.

Race 1 was filled with yellow flags. Normally that's a good thing if you're trying to move forward. Unless, of course, someone behind you losses their brake marker and runs into you entering Turn 3 and breaks the rear wing off your car! Unbelievable! Another race down the toilet. My luck had to change.

The grid for the second race is always set by your second fastest qualifying lap or your fastest race lap (I had almost no race laps due to the yellows and early exit). That meant my first flying lap of qualifying was my qualifying lap for race two! I started 10th out of about 25 entries. Again, not bad considering. However, getting by many equally matched cars and getting to the front would be difficult ... though, in a positive twist of fate, that's exactly what happened. Go figure!?

I'm not advocating starting mid-pack, but somehow it worked. Maybe it was just sheer determination. The race was green until the very end, so I gained the positions the hard way. I earned them on speed.

With about 10 minutes left, an accident brought out the first yellow, which allowed me to be right on leader Andrew Novich (who won for the first time... so congrats there) for the restart and draft up to Turn 1 and down to Turn 5. The green-white-checker final lap was thwarted, though, by a Turn 1 melee, so I didn't get the chance to go for the win. But, I'll take it!

You know the quote, "To finish first you must first finish"? I'm changing it: "To finish first (or second) you must finish the entire weekend without a DNF or being crashed out by someone." Finally, the racing gods smiled on me mechanically and on my fellow drivers for a trouble-free passage to a finish.

The next stop is Virginia International Raceway in IMSA Lites, then three weeks later to Marseilles, France for round 4 of the European Le Mans Series at Circuit Paul Ricard.

P.S. I received a funny tweet the other day. The guy said he was driving at Le Mans playing Forza online and kept crashing, and a fellow player said something along the lines of, "C'mon some high school kid actually raced at Le Mans ... you should be able to do this." LOL!