What’s the weirdest way you’ve ever lost a race you were going to win?
I was curious to hear everyone else’s stories because I’m not sure mine can be topped after what happened last night.
It was the IMSA Sportscar Endurance Challenge at Mugello.
I was driving the LMP3. Mugello is my favorite track in the world (I’m Italian), and even though I’m not highly irated, it’s one of the few tracks where I can match the pace of much stronger drivers (My best lap is, or was till yesterday, I didn’t check today, top 10 in Garage61)
I ended up in the lowest split (1.0 SoF), so it wasn’t the most competitive or fun race, as I was the fastest by over a second per lap. It was my first endurance race, and I was on my way to my first win in this serie.
Then, after about 1 hour and 20 minutes…
A f***ing* cockroach 🪳** ***, about the size of my middle finger, falls from the ceiling straight onto me.
I swear I’ve lived in this house for six years and have never seen a cockroach here before. I don’t even know how or where it came from (I live in Cape Verde, bugs here are pretty common but I’m on the second floor and they usually don’t get up here).
I completely freak out. I somehow manage to keep the car on track for a few seconds, but then I spin at Turn 1. No big deal, because I still had a huge gap.
My plan was to find a safe place to stop, kill the thing, and carry on.
Except it started running around.
While trying to keep an eye on where it was going so I could deal with it once I stopped… I lost control and drove straight into the wall.
Tow back to the pits.
I could have rejoined in second, only about 30–40 seconds behind the leader, so the win was still possible. But I had completely lost my concentration, so I just logged off.
Bonus: despite not finishing the race and ending up with 8 incident points (6 of them thanks to my unexpected passenger), I still gained +0.18 Safety Rating. I don’t even want to know how much SR I would have earned if I’d actually finished. I probably would have been promoted to an A license.
So… what’s the weirdest reason you’ve ever lost a race you were almost certain to win?
P.S. Sam, if you read this, you owe me one 😭
