Hey there, Nic Jonsson here! Going to Barber Motorsports Park this past weekend was something I was really looking forward to for many different reasons. The main reason was that I had very high hopes that we were going to be really competitive with the Proto Auto Lola at this track. It's a technical and a "down force" demanding circuit and the Lola is a good down force car so it should have been a match but for some reason we really struggled in practice and qualifying to get a good handling of the car. Since we had trouble, this also meant we had problems with speed of the car. We tried all sorts of set-ups but seemed to end up in the same place when looking at the times we ran. The balance of the car changed at different parts of the track but the overall lap time was the same (SLOW!). We sat down and went through all the data we been able to gather over the 2 days of running and came up with a set up we thought would be the best of the ones we had run so far.At race time, the first few laps seemed ok when the green flag dropped and I was able to move up a few spots. The first yellow came out and we gained a few more spots and I was able to hang on to my 4th place for the reminder of my stint. The car was still not what we wanted and Ricardo reported the same thing when he got in until we put the last set of tires on and the car all of a sudden came alive! We were able to lap about 2 seconds faster than we had done before and set the fastest race lap! How this happened is a mystery to us but we were happy to see it finally come together. We ended up finishing 5th after a real roller coaster ride which included a "stop-and-go" penalty and a flat tire in the last 20 minutes of the race so with those obstacles in the mix, we're happy with our 5th place!

My Kinetic Motorsports team had a pretty rough weekend as well. Everything started well with 2 out of the 3 cars qualify in the top ten, 5th and 9th positions. Unfortunately, early on in the opening laps our car that was running 4th had an off track experience that put them at the back of the pack with more issues to follow. Our Rookie driver did a great job handing the car over to his co-driver in 9th place where they ended up in the final results. My partner, Russell and his co-driver also did a great job but had some bad luck and finished 11th. The good news is that all the cars came back in one piece and with all the parts still on them.

On a personal note, my wife and son Max came up on Friday night and stayed through Saturday. It was great to have them around the race track...not that I got to see them much at the track but I was able to hang out with them and go to dinner at night was great. This coming week is going to be fun since I have my parents coming in from Sweden to stay with us for a few weeks. I have mentioned in past blogs about the scholarship programs my Dad and I do for young Swedish mechanics. We bring students over to intern at Kinetic Motorsports and so they gain first-hand experience. My dad is bringing a new student with him this week that will spend almost a month at Kinetic's 42,000 square foot race shop working on the cars and will help out at the races...exciting times! I'll fill you in more on that next week.

Until then, have a great week and be safe.

Your friend, Nic