I lost the battle, but I won the war

So, for those of you who know me, you know I do about 4 things in SL: I shop, I hang out with friends (or more accurately, I stand somewhere and talk to them in IM while they're off somewhere else), I DJ - more to come on that later - and I race stock cars. Racing is the subject of this post.

Now, when I first started racing, it wasn't because I had a great love for motorsports. In fact, to say I couldn't stand them would be more accurate. BUT, one of my best friends had his own racing team, and so if I wanted to spend time with him, I was going to be spending time at the track, and I'd much rather DO than WATCH, so, after some consideration, I hopped into a car. Now, no one will say I was some instant wunderkid. I was no natural. I practiced and practiced and practiced, and, for a long time, I sucked... but I was persistent, I had a great teacher who believed in me, and eventually I started getting better.

Fast forward to more recently... two racing associations later, and a rather unpleasant departure from the aforementioned racing team (which was my own fault)... and some success, including a Spectator Stock championship in the first season at KRP... but still, nobody really took me seriously as a racer, I was mid-pack in most of the major series that I ran in, I might make the occasional feature race, but really, I wasn't setting the scoreboard on fire or anything like that.

Then came the new EuroStocks at Racers Island. Now, I had run most of the previous season in their old stock cars, without much success, recognition, or anything... but these new cars were a totally different beast. They suited my driving style perfectly. I won my first pole the first week out. I won my first race at that track the following week. More pole positions, more victories, more fastest laps followed. Add in the banhammering of the one person who probably would have kicked my ass, a few other conveniently-timed missed races by a few key competitors, and we arrive at today. Race 14 of 15.

Going in, I had a 44 point lead. The most points any one racer could gain would be 28, provided they qualified terribly, won both heats, the feature, and got fastest overall lap of the day - an improbable occurrance to say the least. A pole, fastest lap and a feature win yields 27 points, which COULD happen. Either way, I was going to have to have a pretty disastrous day to get toppled (although I had one last week, so I was pretty determined not to repeat). Even finishing dead last, I would have gotten SOME points.

In the end, the story was written by the end of the first heat of qualifying. I won another pole. There was no way I could lose enough points, even coming last in the feature, to be at risk.

So why aren't I jumping up and down with glee? Well, because while I may have won the war, its only because I bombed the shit out of the competition early. The latter half of the season has been pretty dismal, and tonight was no different. I came in with a bang, but I'm ending on a whimper.

I started on the pole, I led the first 10 laps. Then, something ridiculous and out of my control (or at least, out of my ability to figure out how to fix, yet) took me from the lead to 5th. Not so bad, I was still within striking distance, and I'd come back from worse deficits. But instead of shaking it off and going for it, I fell apart. My race went to pieces. If the season had been riding on today's race, I would be off the podium, out of contention, mediocre once more.

So maybe right now I don't really feel like I DESERVE a championship. Some will argue that I earned it, that I did well enough early on to allow myself to relax a bit coming down the backstretch. But the truth is, I got lucky, end of story. People had to miss races for other things, or got taken out by psychotic drivers.

So yes, next Sunday, my name will go down in the books as the Champion of the 2009-2010 Winter EuroStock Season. But right now I don't feel like a winner. Maybe that makes me obsessive and perfectionistic, but that's part of who I am. At least it should shut some of the critics up.