Factory Five Nationals at VIR

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The two weekends leading up to the 2005 Factory Five Nationals at VIR had been mixed.  We won at VIR and then were poor at Road Atlanta so we weren't exactly sure how we would do against some of the top talent in the country.  Thursday and Friday practice wasn't encouraging as we chased down either a fuel or electrical problem.  Once again, it was Harry bailing the out Team Elam as he sorted through everything as Dan went after parts.  The results seemed to pay off for Saturday's exhibition race as Dan was one of the fastest cars on the track.  At one point, the official results showed him in third place, but inspectors found an illegal spring in the engine - resulting in our first ever disqualification.  The spring didn't give us a competitive advantage, but it was still illegal so it meant a late night and early morning rework of the engine.  Somehow, our talented engine-builder Mike Morris once again pulled off the impossible and completed the changes to the engine with minutes left in the qualifying session.  Eighth place in qualifying wasn't where we wanted to be, but it was a lot better than starting last and we felt we'd be ok once the race got started.  We felt even better about our performance when we found that we'd lost the rear brakes.  The downside was that we'd spent out time correcting the spring problem and not looking over the car or getting it better tuned.

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The talent level for this race was pretty high and while we might challenge for the win, it was going to take some luck to be able to pull it off.  Still, we'd run nearly as fast as the pole sitter even when we were on old tires.  A good start could put us right back at the front and in contention.

That is exactly what we did:  Dan worked out a start plan and timed it to get the run up the middle to move up to the leaders.  But Dan quickly faded as the car lost power and then overheated.  After just a few short laps, it was Dan back in the paddock as Team Elam watched the end of the race in street clothes.

Our run at these Factory Five Nationals hasn't been strong and it marked the third year in a row that we didn't even finish the race.  We showed flashes of speed and recovered from adversity, but we just couldn't quite pull it off.  After so much hard work we really wanted a strong finish.  This was hard.