FKA Race #4 Satilla Creek Raceway, Hortense, GA June 19th, 2004   Photos load one after the other. Depending on your modem speed, there maybe a short delay between images.

Race Report

I really wasn't too excited about going back here. We had such a lousy race here a few months ago that I thought it would be the same but the track was better and I've learned a few things too so the races turned out to be pretty good.

After racing Amelia last week I was sort of prepared to run this track because they both have the "D" shape to them where you don't really turn up in the back stretch. We also were prepared for the gear issues that come with this type of track so we started out on the right foot. Unfortunately, it seems that at every track we have been to this year, in Friday night practice they do nothing other than wet the track and then charge us $10 to run it in for them. Practice then becomes a lot of mud and sliding around but not much practice. This time everybody decided not to give the track their money and do their work for them so we never had a Friday night practice session.

On Saturday morning we slept in a little bit because FKA doesn't start practice for the Jr classes until after 11:00AM. When practice started we picked up where we left off after the last race here as far as gear and set up went but it wasn't long before we realized that we would have to put more gear on the front. We were only losing about 300 RPM in the turns and our lap times were better than the pole time the last time we were here. Taking a few lessons from our notes at Amelia, we tried to lug the motor down a little and see if that would help us in qualifying. We probably could have given it a little more gear in qualifying because we had our fastest lap in lap 3 qualifying about 2 tenths off the pole time in Heavy and then over 4 tenths off the pole in Lite. That put me starting outside in both races, 4th in Heavy and 8th in Lite.

In the first race we put 2 teeth on the rear gear and I was able to move up a position and finish in 3rd but my lap times weren't as good as we thought they should be so we took back off the 2 teeth for the second race. We probably should have took off just one because I couldn't get off the corners like I wanted too and even though I was up to 3rd at one time in the race I couldn't stay there so I finished in 5th,

One tooth on a gear shouldn't hurt you or even help you that much. I think we may be off a little in the horsepower area because my kart just doesn't seem to keep up with the others like it used to. I know that the racers that we are running with are the fastest in the country. They have broken track records several times this year so I think it's time to take a look at our motor program and see if we are missing something there. Now is a good time to do it because I think I have almost got my crew chief convinced that we should move up to Gold before the end of the year!

 

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