When I parked my GT cars in the garage for the season, I assumed the best races of my Summer Road Trip would be behind me. After all, how is an open-wheel noob like me supposed to compete in these alien cars?

As I found in my week driving the Pro Mazda, the answer, surprisingly, was with endurance, and it yielded perhaps my proudest result of the summer. But I’ll get to that later.

Let’s start with the car. The Pro Mazda — formerly branded as the Formula Mazda and Star Mazda — is one of iRacing’s older cars, but it has enjoyed a virtual resiliency like its real-world counterpart, which has hardly changed in the past eight years.

Granted, it doesn’t have Skip Barber levels of popularity with multiple splits in every timeslot, but most afternoon and evening races in US time zones do tend to go official. That’s nice longevity for a years-old car.

You could probably chalk up its staying power, both in real life and on the iRacing sim, to a few factors. For one, it’s a great car for aspiring Indy car drivers to cut their teeth. It also has one of the most varied schedules of any road racing series, including longer natural-terrain road courses, shorter club and street circuits, and even an oval.

Many years ago when iRacing’s GT landscape was relatively barren, both of those aspects attracted me to the series, and I ran a half-season in the then-Star Mazda in the fall of 2011. Sadly, my lasting memory is a heartbreaking loss at Road Atlanta that saw me spin out of the lead with just a few laps to go.

While distant in time, the memories of that moment — the sudden loss of control and desperation as I felt the car sliding on me — are still fresh in my mind. As I returned to the Pro Mazda, I was just hoping that history wouldn’t repeat itself six years later.

The Shakedown

In my first few laps back in the Pro Mazda, the car felt twitchy and it was easy to get behind on my inputs. That was a big difference from the Skip Barber, where everything felt like it happened in slow motion.

But as is sometimes the case in open-wheelers, the cure for a lack of confidence was more speed. The extra downforce provided by taking corners at higher speed helped settle the car, and it soon became a different type of adventure to drive — like a roller coaster car on rails around the hilly Brands Hatch circuit.

Eager to assess my pace against others, I hopped into a well-populated Monday night practice session and, much to my dismay, I found myself nearly two seconds off the fastest drivers.

Watching other cars, I saw that I needed to carry even more mid-corner speed to be competitive, but that was easier said than done. As I pushed the car harder, I was faced with one of my greatest fears behind the wheel: snap oversteer.

I’ll take a tight car over a snappy loose one any day, and in this car, the threat was literally around every corner. With each spin in practice, the memories of my Road Atlanta loss came rushing back.

It was some consolation to see that I wasn’t the only one struggling. At times, the practice session looked more like a demolition derby, with cars spinning and crashing everywhere — sometimes right in front of me, sometimes right into me.

I added a click of wing to stabilize the car, and while it helped my pace, I was still more than a second off the fastest drivers. At least, I hoped, I could make it through a full race without spinning out or getting wrecked by someone else.

All By Myself

Although the practice sessions had no shortage of drivers, the first race I joined on Tuesday evening was sparsely populated with only eight cars.

I qualified in second place, 1.3 seconds off the polesitter, so my chances of winning or even keeping up were slim. However, for a brief moment on the first lap, I saw victory flash before my eyes as the leader slid on cold tires exiting the tricky Sheene Curve — a fast right-hander with lots of inside kerbing but none on exit.

Smoke poured from his tires and his car was angled toward the wall — a posture my own car assumed many times in practice at that same spot. But unlike my failed attempts at a recovery, he gathered it up and held the lead, and within two laps, he was several seconds up the road.

As the gaps around me grew and the field shrunk — by lap 16, just five cars were still on track — I just tried to avoid becoming a casualty myself. As I turned error-free lap after error-free lap, I decided to push a bit harder.

But then, with five laps to go…

… a spin, and with it, nightmares from Georgia returning.

Fortunately, it occurred at one of the more open parts of the circuit, exiting the Graham Hill Bend with plenty of grass on either side of the track. With the car undamaged but my confidence shaken, I got it pointed straight and ran the final few laps a bit more cautiously to safely come home in second place.

Before I left the race server, I donned my detective hat and studied some laps run by the winner, who finished 28 seconds and change up the road from me. He was generally carrying more mid-corner speed than me — no surprise there — but he was also using a higher gear than me in certain corners.

Perhaps, I thought, needlessly shifting down one extra gear was bleeding off too much speed. As I prepared for my next race, I adjusted my shifting and did gain some extra time, although it still wasn’t enough to bridge the gap to the fast guys.

To have any chance against them, I would have to cut out my mistakes and hope for some from them. It’s the same mindset that has played to my strengths in endurance races, but I’d have to use it for a 22-lap sprint in an open wheeler.

Just Don’t Spin

I raced again on Wednesday afternoon, this time choosing a timeslot that attracted a fair number of Americans, Europeans, and even a few Australians. With 31 total drivers registered, it was the first race — and one of only three total — that split all week.

I faced some true top-split competition from two drivers who clearly had pace over me in this car. They qualified more than six tenths quicker than me, so I didn’t expect to have a chance at contending with them. My goal was simply to have a clean race with no spins and hopefully come home in third place

As I expected, they pulled away in the early laps, so I was left lapping all alone in third. But on lap 9, the leader was suddenly right back in my sights after spinning exiting turn one.

I was in his draft and could have attempted a pass down the backstretch, but I stayed tucked in behind him. I knew I couldn’t keep him behind me, so I’d be better off if he pulled away and put pressure on the new leader.

Sure enough, with 10 laps to go, the race leader spun exiting Sheene Curve but managed not to hit anything. After I passed him, he was 5 seconds behind but closing quickly — often by as much as half a second per lap.

If he had caught me with four or five laps to go, I would have let him pass and hoped he could catch and battle with the leader a few seconds ahead of me. But as he got closer, the gap stopped narrowing as quickly.

Maybe that because I picked up the pace myself, running my fastest laps of the race once his car was in my mirrors. Or maybe it was the effects of dirty air, which are limited but not non-existent in this car.

I did realize one thing: He was definitely running more downforce than me, because he closed mostly in the corners and hardly at all on the straightaways, even in my draft. That would be a big advantage for me in the final laps as my goal went from cruising home in third place to hanging on to second.

He had a run on me coming to the white flag, so I went defensive and held the inside line. He got to my outside and we ran side-by-side in the final corner, down the curving frontstretch, and through turn one. I hadn’t raced that closely with another car all week, but I managed to hold my line and hold the position.

He didn’t gain much in my draft down the backstretch, but even one missed apex in the final corners would have opened the door for him. So I hit my marks and drove defensively once more through the final corner.

We crossed the line just one tenth of a second apart, and I had successfully held him off. It wasn’t a win, but it was my proudest second-place run, and perhaps my best race, of the summer.

And it wasn’t because of my speed, but because of my endurance. If I had pushed much harder, I would’ve likely ended up in the same spin cycle as the leaders. Instead, I managed to run my pace and steal a position because of a competitor’s mistake.

A Tough Road to Hoe, Even for a Pro

After the race, that driver complimented me on a good battle and asked what series I usually ran. When I told him, essentially, all of them, he acted a little like I was crazy.

I admitted that I hadn’t practiced racing side-by-side in these cars, so the final two laps were uncharted territory for me.

I also asked a few drivers still in the server whether the carnage I had seen this week was typical. They said that no, the racing was typically cleaner in the Pro Mazda series, but tracks with lots of turns and elevation changes like Brands Hatch and Laguna Seca tend to be tougher, especially for drivers new to the car.

That confirmed one thing I had suspected from my first practice laps of the week: The learning curve at the bottom of the open-wheel ladder is much steeper than on the GT ladder.

When I jumped from the Global Mazda into the Mustang earlier this season, it was a gradual change: slightly more horsepower but not much more downforce, and relatively similar handling between both cars.

While the Pro Mazda is the next obvious rung on the open-wheel ladder after the Skip Barber, it’s more of a giant leap than a small step to get there. This tricky car at a challenging circuit is enough to make even the fastest drivers lose control.

While it wasn’t a win, taking advantage of the leader’s spin to finish second helped my similar mistake so many years ago at Road Atlanta haunt me a bit less. After coming full-circle — instead of spinning in one — in the Pro Mazda, perhaps I sent that devil back down to Georgia.