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Daytona! I was really looking forward to this race but whoa, what a disappointment. When we raced here at the Nationals in December the track was tough to figure out, but add 3 months of drought and 60 degrees temperature and you got trouble.
The track is made of lime rock so there is nothing to hold water. They tried the usual stuff to get the track ready. They groomed it and watered it down real good but it would just dry out in 10 minutes or so. Then, the track would glaze over with a light talcum power type dust on the surface that made it slick and unpredictable. Some of the racers were seriously lobbying the officials to let us stand on our qualifying times and not race because they were worried that we would all be killed!
During qualifying things looked pretty good for me. I qualified 3rd in light and 2nd in heavy. Then, we went on to prepare for the races as we usually do. We didn't realize how the powder was effecting our kart. It was just caked on everywhere. We knew that the motor was full of it because you could see it down inside the carburetor, but we never thought to check the brakes. I had to use the brakes a lot more that usual to get though the turns and the combination of that and the lime rock powder caused my brake pads to completely wear out.
In light I got a good start and went right to second and it looked like the pole sitter and I were going to check out and go. The dust was so thick that I could hardly see in front of me or where to turn into the corners. Then, at about the 8th lap, my brakes started to go away and by the tenth lap I was having real trouble getting through the middle of the turn without slipping up out of the groove. By the 10th lap I had no brakes at all and I ran off the track in turn 2 into the hay bales. I got restarted but lost 2 laps to the leader and once more before the end of the race I found myself in the hay bales again. I eventually finished the race in 12th.
In heavy, things started to go bad before the race was even started. First, they called us to the grid over an hour too early by accident. Then the track got so bad that they had to water it between races a few times. Then they had to run it in again. So we waited some more. About the time we were finally lining up for our race I put my foot on the brake and the pedal went to the floor again. I yelled for my crew chief and he tried to fix it but there is not a lot you can do on the grid with out being disqualified. We got the brakes working a little and we decided that I would go out to get some points and then pull off the track if it got too bad.
Well, on the start I got hung out a bit and fell in line at 5th place. I got the brakes to pump up a little and the track was actually getting a little more bite in it so things started looking pretty good. There were a few spins but I was careful and I held onto 5th but then, with 3 laps to go, I hit a hole in the center of turns 3 and 4 and it threw me up the track and out of the groove. Hello talcum powder and hay bales again! Fortunately, I was able to get things sorted out and underway quickly and then a few more karts also spun so I ended up with a 6th place finish. To be honest, I couldn't believe I did even that well!
You know my crew chief was saying that just when he thinks he's getting this thing figured out a little bit, something new gets thrown at him. I think we'll both be really glad to get back to racing on clay again!
