Driver blog

Greetings! After a long and exciting racing season, we are now getting ready for the holidays!

Last week was my final race of the season, Round 11 of the Pick Up’s. It was a tough race as I had a brake failure on Lap 2 that got worse lap after lap. Despite having a nearly undriveable truck, I managed to salvage a 4th place finish in a race that had a huge rate of attrition, as brake issues affected most of the field.

It was a great season for me! It was fun to combine racing in two very different series. I managed to finish in the Top 10 in the NASCAR T4 Series, and I finished 3rd in the Pick Up’s, taking the Rookie of the Year title.

My best race of the season was at Puebla, where I scored my first podium – hopefully the first of many! I love that track! (No wonder why the WTCC goes there every year). But ultimately, it was consistency what finally paid off. Despite finishing in the podium only once, I finished 4th and 5th several times, which helped me climb to the third spot in the standings.

Now it’s time to start thinking about next year. The T4 Series will cease to exist, as it will be replaced with a brand-new series called "Mini Stock Series", which will feature new cars with a new chassis built specifically for NASCAR-style oval racing. We are expecting to get our cars in January to begin testing!

Being present in the NASCAR Mexico awards banquet this year represented a great motivation for me. Next year I want to be on stage to pick up a trophy!

But the T4 cars will also be put to good use, as another promoter (the same that organizes the Pick Up series) immediately jumped in to build an affordable touring car series using those cars. We still have not decided whether we will run that series, but it definitely should be fun, so we will try to get some sponsors (not an easy task the way the economy is going!) to run there as well.

It will certainly be a tough year, but I can’t wait to start the new season! Yes, despite it has been only one week since the end of the season :-) . I look forward to keep improving, and hopefully climb to the top of the podium next year!

Best wishes for these holidays, and Happy New Year!
Rodrigo

Hey there!

It has been nearly two months since I last blogged, but I’m very pleased to say they have been the best two months of my racing career.

In the past we have had a lot of international racing events in Mexico, such as Formula 1, Champ Car, WTCC, and more; but never before had we had a national series that generated so much excitement among the fans, so I’m really glad to be part of it.

A new racetrack was opened in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, a city in southeastern Mexico, and my series was the first to race on it. We arrived there on Wednesday to help with the promotion of the race. The fans went crazy about the event, and more than 20,000 people showed up for the race on Sunday! The track is a highly-banked D-shaped oval at the pure NASCAR style.

The practice sessions saw me near the bottom of the time charts as I was just trying to stay out of trouble and learn the track (which was good because there were at least two wrecks in practice), but by the time the race started I had acquired enough knowledge about the track to gain some positions and finish 8th for my fourth Top 10 of the season.

The season finale of the NASCAR Mexico T4 Series was at my hometown. We raced at the famous Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City, in the oval layout. The support from my family and friends who went to watch me race really motivated me, and I drove one of my best races so far, finishing 8th again, but this time only 3 seconds away from the winner, who incidentally was my teammate and mentor Ernesto Guerrero. As you can see, the race was very tight, with the Top 8 drivers separated by just a few meters. This result allowed me to make it into the Top 10 in the standings.

I had little time to rest, as one week later I raced in the Pick-up Truck Series at Puebla. This is a very nice racetrack – the WTCC races there every year – and I consider it among my favorites. My performance far exceeded my expectations, as I was the fastest in two of the practice sessions, and qualified 2nd. At the start of the race I made a little mistake that cost me the 2nd position, but I managed to hold on to third place for my first podium finish!

I see the trophy at home every day, and it definitely motivates me to keep improving. There are still two races left in the Truck Series, and I think I have a good chance of finishing in the podium again.

It has been a long season – 20 races so far – but I’m very happy with my progress, and I look forward to finishing the season with more good results, and keeping this momentum going for the 2009 season.

I don’t have any races next weekend, so I will go to the USA to watch the season finale of the NASCAR Sprint Cup at Miami. It will be a fun weekend, that’s for sure!

It has been a very exciting second half of the season for me, with strong performances and great improvement in both the Pick-up trucks and the NASCAR T4 series.

I’ve got to admit that the first half of the season brought nothing to write home about. Mechanical breakdowns, pit-stop woes, and being involved in multi-car pileups were just a few parts of an incredible streak of misfortune that had become a thing of everyday. Considering that the 2007 season was pretty much the same, this was becoming too much for me to handle, to the point where it started to affect other aspects of my life, and in one of those "low" days I even started wondering why I didn’t call it quits.

But I’m glad I kept working hard, ignored the nay-sayers, and kept doing my best in every race. The reward would eventually come with a career-best 6th place in the NASCAR race at San Luis.

From a fan standpoint, in any series it’s nice to see the guys who despite finishing 40th in all the races, don’t give up and keep coming back to try again. However, from a driver standpoint, it’s not a very pleasurable situation to be in…even more so when the series you are racing in is broadcast on TV to all the country.

It’s really amazing how a good result can boost your confidence and your performance. A much-needed Top-6 finish was just what the doctor ordered. Since then, I have added a few more strong finishes, which have helped me climb several spots in the championship. With two rounds remaining, I’m now 12th, and can still crack into the Top-10 in the standings, which would be remarkable.

As for the Pick-up Truck series, I am very pleased with my latest result, a career-best 4th place two weeks ago at Guadalajara. With this, I have almost secured the rookie-of-the-year title in the series, as the math says I just have to show up for the final three races for it to be official.

Now it’s time to keep pushing harder than ever. With just two rounds remaining in NASCAR, and three in the trucks, I have to show that I can be a top finisher next season.

At least the joy of racing is back, vowing never to leave. At the end of the day, that’s what matters the most. And certainly, why not think about battling for the title in 2009?

Greetings from sunny Mexico! It’s been a few weeks since I last blogged, so this time I will tell you a little bit about what we have done away from the track.

When we raced in the NASCAR event at Guadalajara, I was invited to visit a rehabilitation center for children with disabilities. It was a very rewarding experience to be able to spend a couple of hours with those kids, who for some reason have not been as fortunate as us. We are really blessed to be healthy and to be able to do what we enjoy, which is racing cars, so seeing those kids do their best to improve their life condition was a real eye-opener.

It was very satisfying to be able to share a moment of happiness with the kids. They were very impressed with the visit from the drivers, and for a few moments they paid more attention to us than their doctors. In the end, I learned a lot from them.

The result in the race was not what I had hoped for, especially after I had finished a career-best 6th in the previous race, but the visit to the therapy center was an experience that really made the weekend worthwhile.

I am happy that I have improved a lot since the start of the season. After a slow start in the first four races, I have managed to finish in the Top 12 in the last 3 races, which has moved me up to 14th in the standings, which is not bad considering the difficulty of the series. I’m looking forward to keeping this momentum going for the rest of the season!

Hello everyone! This is my first post on my DriverDB blog. First, I am going to introduce myself.

My name is Rodrigo Marbán, and I am a 21-year old driver from Mexico. I am currently competing in the NASCAR Mexico T4 Series, and also in the Mexican Pick-up Truck series.

Both series are quite different to each other, which is great because as a driver starting your career, it’s good to get your hands on as many types of cars as you can.

The T4 Series is organized and sanctioned by NASCAR Mexico, which is a regional branch of NASCAR that operates in my country. Almost all the races are held on oval tracks, except one or two every year that are held on road courses. As you probably know, NASCAR racing is quite popular in North America.

The cars we run in the T4 Series are 4-cylinder "mini stock cars" that are built using several of the original components of ordinary road cars. As a result, the series is relatively inexpensive in comparison to others, while there is a very high level of competitiveness on the track. The series uses 2-liter engines, and there are three different car models participating: the Dodge Neon (or Plymouth Neon as it is called in some countries), the Mazda 3, and the Chevrolet Astra (known as Opel Astra in some places).

Our races are 1-hour long and serve as the opening of double-header events that also include the NASCAR Corona Series, which is the premier racing series in Mexico.

To enhance my racing experience, this year I made my debut in the Pick-up Truck Series. The trucks are very powerful (V8, 300 HP), and it is quite difficult to drive them at the limit, so it is a good place to learn. I am enjoying the challenge so far!

With the trucks, this year I had the chance to drive in the support races for the A1 Grand Prix event in Mexico City, and the WTCC at Puebla. It was unbelievable to be racing on the same track, on the same weekend as some of the greatest drivers in the world!!

So this is it for now; in my next blog post I will talk about how racing is in my country, and how we use racing as a way to help disadvantaged people. If you want to share your thoughts, please be sure to drop me a line: rodrigo@rodrigomarban.com

Have a nice week!
Rodrigo