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Well, we didn't really know what to expect. Jackson has never hosted a state race before and there were several recent changes to the track to meet the requirements of the WKA officials, but it turned out that there was plenty of room for everybody and the track held up pretty well considering the cloudless skies and the bright hot sun that shone throughout the entire event.
Things started out a little rough in the first practice Saturday morning. I guess we were a little to antsy to get racing and we took off a little fast on the wet, slippery track. One of my racing buddies spun and another hit him head on and shot straight up in the air about 4 feet. I was going too fast too and I spun sideways into another kart and bashed in the side of my kart. First practice, 1 lap, 4 busted up go-karts!
Things got better once my crew chief got the nerf bar off my tires and we then went out to qualify for the race. In light I got caught up in traffic, threw one lap away and spun out on another. Still, I was second fastest over all. In heavy I got a little tight and although we were 2 tenths slower than the pole I still qualified second. That means outside pole for both races! I think my crew chief is starting to get the hang of this qualifying thing!
In the first race (light) the sun was still out so we guessed that the track would still be fast and tight. We kept the air pressure in the tires high like we did in qualifying to loosen the kart up. That seemed to hurt us a little because I couldn't get through turn 2 like I wanted. I dropped back to 4th on the start and then stayed with the leaders until about the 16th lap when I got a chance to take 3rd and grabbed it. We were so close that I had to block coming out of turn 4 on the last lap and held my position by only .05 of a second.
Then in heavy we dropped the air pressure and things went a little better. On the start I couldn't beat the pole sitter into turn one so I tried to give him a little room but I wound up going high and got freight trained. Coming out of turn two I fell in behind the 5th place kart and in 2 laps I was back up to 2nd again. We ran 17 laps and I was gaining on the leader when a kart spun in turn 4 to bring out the first caution. That bunched us back up again for a 3 lap shot out. On the restart I tried everything I could to move the leader out of the way but he was too good a driver to let me do that. Then, the 3rd place kart and I got to racing and we swapped places on the second to last lap but I held my position from there and took second!
Once again, we bettered our last attempt. We're going to win one of these someday. I just know it!
