How to (nearly) win the Supernats: Super Saturday

Avoid the LCQ’s

Saturday is a quiet day for most drivers. One warmup session & all going to plan only one race.

If you’ve had a bad Friday, or a crash on Saturday, then you’re getting nervous. As the LCQ’s await!

For a driver not in the LCQ, it’s the best race to watch from the stands! 36+ drivers in a race vying for 6 spots to transfer into Sundays main event.

If you’re in the LCQ (which I have been once before), it’s terrifying! Every driver wants to kill one another all for that transfer!

I remember back in 2015 racing the SuperNats and having qualified P5 I was in with a shot that week.

Heat 1 came around and I finished P2 behind a young European driver Charles Leclerc, who’s now gone on to much bigger and better things!

After a crash in heat 2 with Leclerc that put me in the barriers, the LCQ welcomed me with open arms starting a lowly 17^th place with only 6 transferring.

My Aussie mechanic made the bold call to use our race tires from the 3 heats, while others elected to use their 2^nd set of new tires to gain an advantage and hopefully transfer.

But the way he put it to me was that if we put new tires on and qualify for the main, we will be starting between 34-40^th on used tires. So even making the final, we stood no chance.

So we went out with used tires and after making a big start into Turn 1 and avoiding the carnage, I found myself in P5. That was good but the drivers on new tires had a distinct advantage early in the race until about half way when their tires overheated quicker than my older tires.

I was fortunate to have superior speed to most of those drivers and ended up P3 with a transfer spot and into the main event on new tires the same as everyone else ahead of me.
You need luck in the LCQ, simple as that. And now with dropdown bumpers and 5 second penalties, it’s awfully hard to charge through a sudden death race from deep in the pack, avoid incidents, avoid penalties and qualify.

But it is Vegas, and if luck is on your side you need to ride it!

Unfortunately for a lot of drivers (over 100) they will not make Super Sunday and will likely drown their sorrows on the tables and bars in Vegas for the evening!

Tomorrow is our last instalment on ‘How to (nearly) win the SuperNats’ as it’s SUPER SUNDAY!