[Bongle]

We ran in Toledo this weekend. We were in the brown #93 Civic, which was running in the teens out of 53 (despite myriad brake-heating issues and way-too-frequent driver changes) until the other civic spun out about 15ft ahead of us in a spot with concrete barriers on both sides and no runoff room, resulting in a pretty violent collision.

We didn't even make an effort to look at the engine after the crash because our suspension was pooched enough to put an end to any further racing. The engine looked fine at a glance, and we were thinking we'd just have to fix the suspension and put a new starter on the engine. However, as my brother took a closer look yesterday, he found bits of metal in the timing belt case, couldn't find the timing belt itself, and found cracks all over the various external casings of the engine.

The atmosphere there reminded me of a FIRST event, and not just because I referred to most teams by their number. Everyone was always coming by to say hi and check out each other's cars and everyone seemed to be in a good mood. There were rich teams, there were poor teams (us), there were cool pits, there were hacked-together-out-of-tarps-and-rollcage pits.