Ennui

Qualifying was a bit rough for Yibo and Melvin. They struggled with lap times, and their placement* wasn't great for race 1 (it's actually a bit worse for race 2 today), which meant they were dealing with heavy traffic right out of the gate.

Melvin took the first part of the race and did quite well, and had them leading in their category and in 13th place overall.

Unfortunately after performing quite well for the first several laps when he took over, Yibo had a couple of setbacks that lost them a lot of ground:

He was penalized for leaving the pit lane too early (they are required to remain there for a minimum amount of time).

Through no fault of his own he was struck by another driver on a corner and spun out, losing all the ground they'd gained.

In the end they placed 21st (of 28) overall, 8th (of 10) in their category.

The sting of their loss was somewhat softened for me by the fact that a woman racer - Samantha Tan of Toronto, Canada and her racing partner Jiang Jaiwei - won in Yibo's category, and it was her first time racing in China.

That was kind of cool. It's not often you see women in racing, and it's good when their success can speak for itself and counter a lot of the misogyny I'm sure they must endure.

Just sad that we didn't get to see Yibo on the podium.

That's racing for you! These things happen, and it's just part of the experience. Some aspects of racing are about skill, and some are entirely about luck, and luck didn't work in their favor unfortunately.

Tonight's race will be a bit tougher for them because they are starting from further behind, but they're fighters and know what to do, so we can only cheer them on and hope for the best!

*For those who are new to racing, the qualifying races determine placement in the initial starting grid. The further back you end up, the more cars you have ahead of you at the outset, which means the more traffic you have to contend with and the more drivers you have to pass to gain any ground. Yibo and Melvin were favored to start in the top 10 and they actually ended up starting in P18 for race 1, P24 for race 2.

For information about how to watch the race tonight, see this post.