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WKA Twister Karts NationalsLow Country Kartway, Aynor, SC
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Race Report
Low Country! It's been 2 long years since we raced here and I was excited to come back. It's a short, fast track that's fun to drive and the competition is always fierce. I've run out of fuel at this track more than at any other because there is usually a lot of cautions but this year things went smoothly on the track. At least once I got on the track...
I guess the best place to start with this report is with the motors because that's basically the whole story of the weekend. If you've been reading my pr4evious reports you know that we've been struggling a lot this year with a new chassis and then tires and now it appears that our motors haven't been quite up to what our competitors have had. It's sort of coming around now and a few of the struggles we were having are starting to make a little bit more sense. The new chassis is a lot freer than the old one which makes it feel like it is floating around the track. That takes a way a lot of the track feel that I used to have so it's been hard for me to tell my crew chief what the kart needs. Since we were so slow we thought that it was because the kart was bound up with too much rubber or too much prep so we kept going to harder and harder tires but then the kart would just slide off the track. I really didn't know the difference between a push in the kart, a tight condition, or a 4 wheel slide. They all seemed the same to me, I turned the wheel and the kart just kept going up the track! But, there is a big difference and I learned a lot more about what that is this weekend.
We got to the track on Thursday just as the thunder storm came and dumped 5 inches of rain on the track. A few hours later I had the pits set up and was out saying high to a few of my friends. The track workers were already back working on the track to get it ready for practice on Friday so I wasn't worried that the rain had ruined everything. On Friday morning we picked up our motors and got the karts ready for practice and then, just before practice was supposed to start, it rained again. We waited about 4 hours for the track to dry and let some other karters have the privilege of running the track in before we went out on the track. Unfortunately, the track was still pretty slow and we couldn't get a good feel for what the motors and the set up was doing so we put things up for the night and hoped that the rain wouldn't come back until Monday.
On Saturday we went out for practice and the kart felt pretty good but I was at least a 1/2 a second slower than the fastest karts so we started looking at the tires again for more speed. In the past, when the kart was tight, we could see that the tires would feather up on the edges but our tires were still as smooth as they were before I went out. Still, we took off rubber and went out to practice in the second round and sure enough we found that the kart seemed to want to slide up the track which I thought was tight. So, we took off even more rubber and went out to qualify. By this time the track had come in and I didn't slide but I didn't feel any forward bite either. When the qualifying results were posted I had just barely made the race qualifying in the 30th position for the flat kart and 2nd from the last, in 25th place in the champ. That is the worst we have ever done!
The race in the flat kart turned out pretty good though. I got a good start and picked up several position before we finished the first lap and from there I watched what was going on up in front of me so I wouldn't get caught up in anybody else's troubles. As the laps went by I passed my way up to 8th place where I finished the race.
Now, in the champ things went a little different. By this time my crew chief was convinced that the reason we were having so much trouble was the motors so he decided to go over to the guy who has been pretty much the class of the field this year and ask him if he would loan us a motor. After they talked a little he handed us one of his best and told us what gear he thought we should run. We thanked him and then headed back to our pits to put it on and get ready for the race. Then, they said that the track was slowing down a bit so maybe we should run a different gear, but maybe not. So, we set everything up so that we could quickly change gear or just leave it the way it was and tighten the bolts and go. The problem was, when it came time to go up for the race, we didn't tighten the bolts. When they gave us the command to start the engines the bolt fell out of my clutch along with the key and I just sat there and revved the motor. The officials gave us as much time as they could to get it fixed but we couldn't find the parts so I didn't get to start or run the race.
On Sunday the only thing we changed was the oil and we went out for practice in the last round to see if we needed to change anything else. I was just as slow as I had been before in the flat kart which makes sense since we didn't do anything to it but I was like a rocket in the champ with the borrowed motor. Some of the other racers were talking about how they were running high air pressure in their tires so we went up on the air in our tires too. In the flat kart the air didn't seem to hurt me but then I wasn't very fast either. Still, if it worked in the flat kart it should have worked in the champ as well so we went up on the air a good bit in the champ too. Boy, was that interesting! I had tons of horsepower, and tons of bite coming off the corners but it got a little hairy in the center of the turn when I hit the sand that the other karts were throwing out on the track. I came close to loosing it on almost every lap but I held on and qualified 3rd. If we had just not put so much air in the tires I think I could have gotten the pole! Oh yaa, I qualified 27th in the flat kart.
The fist race was the flat kart and things didn't go quit as well as they did for me on Saturday. I got a good start and all but the opportunities to pass didn't come as they had the day before and I wound up finishing just a little better than I started in 22nd. The champ race was totally different though. First the kart that qualified just ahead of me in 2nd had a problem with his clutch and never started the race so I was in second when the green flag dropped. We got to racing a bit and I dropped back to 3rd as the leader checked out but then all of a sudden he lost it in one of the turns and spun while the 2nd place kart and I went by. A few laps later I was on the leaders tail and I was going to try to draft behind him for as long as I could so that we could get some distance on the karts behind us. That was working pretty good until we came up on lap traffic going into turn 3 and then a lap kart pulled down on the leader and spun him up the track giving me the lead. That lasted until the next corner when the 2nd place kart caught me going into turn one. There was a spin just ahead of us and I think they had kicked a bunch a sand out on the track because the second place kart didn't really hit me that hard but we both lost control and ran off the track in turn 2. I never got totally turned around so I was able to quickly get back on the track again but I lost a lot of track position on the leaders. Still, that motor was awesome and I began to run down the karts in front of me passing my way back up to 4th at the finish.
I have to thank Shorty Griffin of GPR Racing for loaning me that Hicken motor. Boy, what a difference that made! Before we left the track we gave it back to him along with 2 of our motors for David Hicken to rebuild for us so, aftet we bolt them on along with a little bit more rubber, I plan to be running up front for the rest of the season!
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