SOLID DAY GETS ROUGH FOR JOANIDES AT MESA

Nick Joanides, in a team car to Eddie McKean struggled in practice posting only the 20th fastest time. Nick made several changes to the car before qualifying and it paid off as he picked up over 4/10th's of a second with a solid 10th place qualifying effort among 30 competitors. The McKean team showed that both cars were virtually identical as both Nick and Eddie McKean qualified within 3/1000th's of a second of each other with Eddie taking the 11th spot.

Through the first 30 laps, Nick and Eddie ran nose to tail in the 9th and 10th positions with Nick leading the way. Nick's car was tight in the center of the corner and loose off and was un able to gain ground, so he chose to cruise through the first 100 laps in hopes that he would not fall off as much as the leaders and around lap 30 he allowed his teammate Eddie McKean to go by, however 5 laps later, McKean's hood came loose and flopped up onto his windshield. Eddie slowed quickly and Nick swerved to avoid him when McKean went high on the race track due to his blocked vision and directly in front of Nick. Nick had to slow dramatically and lost 4 positions in the process. 

Several caution flags followed and with many cars a lap down, although Nick was in the 12th position on the lead lap, due to double file restarts, he actually restarted each time in the 24th position. The lapped cars continually interfered with lead lap cars, forcing them to race lap down cars rather than cars for position, but Nick stayed patient and it appeared to be paying off as Nick moved back into the top 10 and began closing in on the top 5. 

At lap 109 however, a car multiple laps down, spun near the end of the front straight. The car in front of Nick checked up and Nick did the same to avoid contact, however the car directly behind Nick did not and nailed Nick in the rear, sending him spinning down the front straight away and into the car stopped in the middle of the track. The damage knocked the rear spoiler off the car, which at a high speed track like Mesa Marin, makes the car virtually un-drivable, forcing Nick to just hang on for the remaining laps, resulting in a disappointing 17th place finish, three laps down.

The remaining laps still were not without incident. Nick was trying to nurse home the damaged car and just get to the finish, however with Nick holding on the bottom of the race track (as lapped cars are supposed to do, to allow the lead lap and faster cars the outside groove) with another lapped car going by on the outside, an additional lapped car dove to the grass and came back up on the race track into Nick, sandwiching him between the two lapped cars. Then just 18 laps later, the leader was closing in on Nick's wounded race car. Nick moved to the low groove to give the leaders plenty of room to pass on the outside as they had done all night long. For some reason though, the leader, Auggie Vidovich Jr. with a 4 second lead on second place, decided to try to go below Joanides, driving through the grass and right back up the track and hit Joanides in the left rear sending him sideways. Nick managed to hang on to it and both cars were able to continue.