Telitz: The St. Pete struggle bus

While waiting for our race, we were introduced to a lovely Florida storm. Tornado warnings ensued, and we were all told to stay inside our transporter until the storm passed. When we emerged, it was pouring rain and the wind was doing terrible things to my hair. Immediately after the worst of the storm passed, Peter and I were told to go to a drivers’ meeting down at the series transporter. The meeting was to tell us that our race would be starting in 40 minutes and that we should be on the grid in just 20 minutes. We sped through the pits to get back and get suited up for our first race!

The track was extremely slippery on the pace laps. All of the paint on city streets becomes very slippery when wet. When the green flag flew, I timidly made my way around the track for the first few laps. I fell back to 5th before I found my rhythm and had moved back up to 4th when a full-course caution came out.

After the restart, I kept pressure on 3rd place until I had a moment on some of that slippery paint in turn 8 and tagged the wall with my left rear. Sadly, my first race of the season was over.

The ArmsUp guys did a great job getting my car back to proper racing condition that night, and it was ready to go for race two.

I started race two from 4th place. We all made it through turn 1 without incident, but then coming into turn 4 one of my fellow competitors channeled his inner Pastor Maldonado and ran into the back of Henrik Furuseth, who rolled back and collected me and then most of the rest of the field. You can view the shenanigans here:

And, once again, my race was finished long before the checkered flag flew.

The results didn’t show it, but I had great speed. I was pretty bummed I was not able to get any results, but that’s racing sometimes. Luckily, the season is long and there are going to be plenty more opportunities for me. I absolutely cannot wait to get back in the car at Barber and keep doing my thing. Results will come!

A huge thank you to all my supporters, ArmsUp Motorsports, Mazda, Rice Lake Weighing Systems, Chuck G Fabrication, Linear Sport, and my parents. Thank you guys for giving me opportunities to do what I love to do!

And thank you to all my readers. Y’all are awesome.

Aaron

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Aaron Telitz is a racer in the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship for ArmsUp Motorsports. Follow him on Twitter at @aarontelitz and on Facebook.

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