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Everybody thought we would get rained out. That happens a lot at St. Lucie but the will of us hard core racers who decided to come out anyway chased the rain clouds away.
The track was slow on Friday night and it seemed that it wasn't ever going to come in. On Saturday morning, after a brief shower, the track looked and felt even worse. No one was getting any RPM and there wasn't any bite in the track even after 2 rounds of practice. Then during the drivers meeting before qualifying the sun finally came out and warmed up the racing surface. We had added a couple of teeth to try to get the RPM up and were all set to go out for qualifying. All of a sudden the track came in and picked up about 2 seconds and 400 RPM. We quickly went back to the trailer and put back the gear we were running in practice. Then we went out and qualified for Sportsman I Heavy and I got the pole! We dropped another tooth to qualify for Sportsman I Light and I got the pole for that too!
Then came our first race for Sportsman I Heavy. After the first couple of classes went out we saw that the track was really tearing up prepped tires and the karts were tightening up and coming off the corners up in the grass. So, my crew chief decided to go to unprepped tires for the race. Turned out they were a little too hard and I could never hook up even after the tires came in. I held first for about 3 laps, ran in second until about the 15th lap, then finally finished in 3rd.
By the time our second race started the sun had gone down and the track started getting slick. We switched back to prepped tires and I lead the first 10 laps then lost the lead finishing second. We just weren't as fast as we needed to be to win but we learned a lot about the tires and we wound up with the best finishes we have ever had at a state race.
