VIRGIE, Ky. — Story by Race Chaser Online Managing Editor Jacob Seelman for Real Sim Racing — Stroker Aces photo —
For Real Sim Racing veteran driver Nathan Little, last Monday’s =RSR= Full Throttle Cup Series event at Texas Motor Speedway was equal parts relief and frustration.
The relief came from scoring his best effort of the season at the wheel of his No. 41 Pecan Spinwheels/The Angry Grandpa Show Chevrolet SS, while the frustration was in how close he came to claiming his first series victory.
Little was blocked four times in the final 15 laps of last week’s Real Deal Grafix 300k at Texas by Steel Horse Racing’s Jeff Ward, once saying that Ward nearly “took his nose to the wall” in trying to keep the lead.
It was enough though — the move broke Little’s momentum and sent Ward on to what was his first FTCS checkered flag — leaving the =RSR= veteran fuming following the finish.
“I feel like I’ve been due for a while and I feel like I race these guys pretty clean. I’m not a hard-nosed driver by any means,” Little said of his driving style. “[Unfortunately], it looks like I’m going to have to be in order to win one of these things. These guys sure don’t care — they’ll take your freaking nose off. I’m a little hot [over this one].”
“All in all, Jeff had the fastest car all night, but it would have been nice if he had shown us a little bit of respect there when we’re both racing for the win. I understand — it’s racing for the win and racing hard — but it’s just tough. It was fun though. I guarantee we put on a good show, I know that.”
Little circled one of his main issues, however, in bridging the gap to victory lane — finding single lap speed in qualifying, something that has proved difficult for his two teammates as well in 2015.
“The Stroker Aces team — me and Eric both, and John too — have been struggling all year in qualifying. We’ve just flat out sucked [at that]. That’s our fault. What it does is, it makes us have to work a little bit harder in order to get up there and race with those guys. It’s just tough when they race us like that.”
However, with his best finish of the season in hand and a move up to ninth in points, Little looks forward to Bristol on the strength of his second top-five result of 2015 — and says he won’t be the one to let his emotions boil over from the Lone Star state to the high banks of “Racing’s Last Great Coliseum.”
“Nothing at all carries forward from [Texas],” Little affirmed. “I’d hate to be like a few of the drivers in this league that do carry it over week to week, but we’ll go racing like we race anyone else and we’ll keep racing with respect and see how far that gets us. It’ll probably cause me to be like Mark Martin, always the bridesmaid in my career and never winning anything, but we’ll keep doing it. I’d rather have respect any day.”
Despite it all, however, Little still has his eyes affixed forward on the ultimate prize — not the championship; not yet, anyways — but on that elusive first victory, saying it would mean more to him than most, if not all, of his prior accomplishments in =RSR= competition.
“If we can get that first Full Throttle win, boy, that would be special,” Little said. “I’ve been close a bunch of times and just haven’t been able to seal the deal. Sometimes it’s been my fault, and sometimes it hasn’t been, but if we keep on doing what we’re doing and running as strong as we have been — it will come. I’m pretty sure of that.”
“For now though, all we can do is wait and see what happens.”
Catch Little in action tonight at 9:30 p.m. Eastern along with the rest of the Real Sim Racing field as they compete in the Thunder Valley 225 in Support of Steve Byrnes and Stand Up to Cancer live on LSRTV.
For more information on Real Sim Racing, visit www.realsimracing.com.
