Well, my racing season is off to a much better start than last year.  Last week we raced in the World Series of Asphalt.  This event is like 9 Saturday nights in a row of which  I was able to race 5 of them.

RACE 1 - (video)
I have school on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I just can’t miss any days because the classes I am taking this semester are kinda tough.  So, I missed practice on Thursday which put me a day behind the other racers in my class.  Still, my car was pretty good right from the beginning and when we qualified I was just a few hundredths off my fastest time. Since the track was a little slower that usual, I figure that I was maybe a few tenths quicker than I had been before.

My qualifying time got me a 6th place position on the start. I was planning on taking it easy and seeing what happened up front before I really started racing hard. Just as I thought, in just 2 laps we already had a crash. I had a problem too. My car was shooting sparks out the back. I came down pit road and stopped in front of a friend of mine and he took the hood off my car, found the problem and put the hood back on.  The thing was, he didn’t fix the problem so when the race got restarted I was still shooting sparks out the back.

My crew chief was in the spotter stand and he thought the wheels were falling off so he made me come in. When I got to my trailer I jumped out and lifted the hood and found that a brake rotor cooling hose had dropped down and was dragging on the track.  I pulled it up and stuffed it under a frame rail so it wouldn’t fall again. Then, I got back in the car and headed back out on the track.

Since I was 2 laps down, I just ran in the back and got a little seat time. I finished the first night in 13th. I really need a pit crew!

RACE 2 - (video)
I’m not sure how they decide on the starting order.  To be honest, this never makes much sense to me. Anyway, I started this race in 9th and made good progress through the first part of the race. I ran a good part of it in 6th right in line with the leaders.  I was just as fast as they were but not faster so I couldn’t do anything but stay in line. Later in the race things heated up and I just missed a wreck. 

On the restart everybody must have figured that they had just a few laps left to get it done and we were all driving a little too hard. I slipped up in turn one and lost a position and before I got back in a rhythm another car got under me and tried to run me up the track into the back stretch wall so I had to lift and let him by too. At the end I finished in 9th while it seemed like everybody crashed at the finish line.

RACE 3 - (video)
This was my best race of the event. We had been making small adjustments before each race and practice and the car was getting better and better. For the first time ever I was running lap times in a race that were just as fast as my best qualifying times.

I started the race in 7th but after a wreck in the first lap and spin on the restart, I found myself in 5th. It got a little racy at times throughout the race. I had a couple of challenges and held them off and, just like the first race, I could run with the leaders but I couldn’t pass any of them. When the checkered flag came out, I was still in 5th where I finished the race.

Race 3 was on Sunday night and the Late Models were off on Monday.  Tuesday I had to go to school so my crew chief got a friend of ours to come down from North Carolina to run the car on Tuesday night.

The first thing he did was start measuring everything and it turned out that, with all the little changes we had made, we had the rear end of the car out of alignment. They fixed that and made a few practice laps. The tire temperatures said that we needed more camber in the left front.  Turns out my crew chief was confused and had been reading the numbers backwards. They fixed that and the car got really loose. It turns out that all this time the camber was what was causing the car to push at the center.

Now a new problem was starting to develop that had nothing to do with us directly.  The days were getting warmer and warmer and the skies were clear.  We had a lot of cars putting a lot of rubber down on the track and no rain to wash it off. There were several different types of rubber compounds being used and some of the drivers were putting tire softener in their tires which eventually wound up on the track too.  All this mess made the groove move up and the track get tight down low and loose up high. Everything we had been doing was sort of out the window by Friday when I got back to the track for my next race.

Add to this that everybody was getting tired and cranky and hot tempers and fights were breaking out all over. I haven’t seen adults act like this since I played T-Ball!

RACE 4 - (video)
After missing 3 races I was now back down to starting 9th again which was pretty much last because about half the cars in my class were now wrecked. The race started off with out any problems and I ran about 18 laps trying to get around the car in front of me. I kept messing up my corner entry and that would kill my momentum.  The car was turning really good at the center though.  In fact, it was turning too good. I had to get back on the gas slowly or the car would have spun out so I just couldn’t get a run on the car in front of me. Finally, he got a little tight and slid up the track in the center of turns 1 and 2 and I dove under him to get to his inside. He saw me knocking at his door and pulled down to block me but he was to late getting there and I hit him in his left rear tire and spun him out.
I got the worst of the wreck and now the right front of my car was collapsed against the right front tire. I laid back a little on the restart to see if I had hurt the car and all it seemed to do was make the car a little bit looser on entry into the corner.  

A few laps later there was another caution so, on the restart, I closed up on the car in front of me and got ready to try and make a few position on the start. Both cars ahead of me went to the high side and I dove under and passed them both. I was now in 8th and holding on hoping I wouldn’t spin out. Then, on the last lap the leaders all got bunched up and 3 cars spun and I crossed the finish line in 5th.

After the race my mother was standing around talking to a friend and the father of the kid who was driving the car I spun out was talking a bunch of trash about me. He was saying how tomorrow I was going to be taking my car home in pieces. My mom piped up and confronted the man and he just kept taking and making all kinds of accusations and threats. Mom got pretty upset and came back to the trailer and told me about it. Then, I got upset and went to find the guy. I figured if we had a problem we should take care of it then instead of on the track tomorrow. Besides, I didn’t like him talking to my mom like that at all.

When I found him he was in the pit office and he wouldn’t come out. Imagine that!  Big talking man scared of a 17 year old kid! I learned a lesson that night about people.  It’s the ones who don’t talk that you have to be afraid of. The officials told me to walk it off and go back to my trailer and they would take care of it which I believe they probably did.

You know people always think that, when 2 drivers get into it on the track, one of them did it on purpose. I don’t want to incriminate myself, but I can tell you it’s a lot harder to intentionally wreck someone than you think. Just trust me on this cause I’m not saying any more.

 RACE 5 - (video)
Saturday night and it’s the last race of the event. I got to the track early and went over my car to see what needed to be fixed. We got the nose piece back in place no problem but I’ve now got some small pieces of metal in the oil of my transmission and half the teeth on my flywheel are missing. I thought I could get one more night out of my tires but they looked pretty worn out too.

After the first practice I was coming back to my pits and my crew chief told me to turn the tires over in the sand to scrub the loose rubber off of them so we could check and see how much tread we had left. I dropped the clutch and gave it a little gas and, instead of turning the tires over a little bit, I accidentally did a burn out that made Jimmy Johnson look like an amateur! Well, that ticked off everybody parked in turn 3 and before I got to my pits I had a guy trying to get into my car with me. A lady who I don’t even know had just stopped by my pits and saw this man coming. She grabbed a hammer out of my tool box and went after the guy. He jumped back and then asked me to come out on pit road away from the lady so he could beat me up.  I not so politely declined. What a day…

After we got the camber set properly the car was loose all through the corner so we kept making adjustments and by the last night we had the car pretty much back to where we had it set up about a year ago! In the last practice the car was still a little loose so we made a few slight changes to tighten the car up for the feature.

I was now back up to starting the race in 6th.  I had the car working really good, especially off the corners, and with new tires I thought I had a good chance at a real strong finish.

On the start I just couldn’t get going and the car behind me held it to the floor and ran up under me going down the front stretch. I made it through the corner but the yellow came out and we had to restart the race. On the second start he did it again but this time it knocked the transmission into neutral. I had to pull up and let some cars go by while I struggled to get the car back in 4th gear.  By the time I did, I had fallen back to 11th place at the rear of the field.

Once I got the car going I was fast. We probably tightened the car up a little too much because it was pushing just a bit at the center but that might have been because I was driving the car a little too hard. I blew by one car a lap later and was catching the field quickly when the caution came out for a spin on the front stretch.

On the restart they put the car that was running up my behind to the rear and I got a position on the start so I was now back up to 6th place. About 4 laps later I was on the 5th place car’s bumper but I messed up the entrance to turn one and slid up the track at the center. That allowed the car behind me to get to my inside so I had to let him go by.

I fell in behind him and planned to follow him up a few positions. Then, he caught the car driven by the kid who tried to block me the night before. He got a real good run off of turn 2 on the outside and when the kid realized he was there he turned up to try to block, but as usual, he was too late. The car in front of me slowed as he hooked the kid’s bumper and turned him towards the outside wall. I figured they would both crash up against the wall so I dropped down and punched the gas to get by them on the outside. About that time the kid over corrected and turned the car right down in front of me and all I could do was brace myself as I hit him right in the door and then we both slide to the inside wall on the backstretch.

Once they got us separated I was able to get started and get going again. We couldn’t tell how damaged the car actually was but it felt fine to me. I restarted the race in 7th and at first the car felt like I might be able to get a top 5 after all. Then something started rubbing on the right front tire and my crew chief was worried that I might blow the tire and wreck even worse. It didn’t seem like I could really improve my position much so I agreed - reluctantly - to come in and call it a night.  I wound up finishing the race in 8th.

Well, that’s the most racing I’ve ever done in a 9 days.  I think I really learned a lot but now I’ve got a lot of work to do to get the car back in race condition. Plus, I’ve still got a long ways to go to get the Lucky 7 Sportsman car ready for the start of the season next month too. So I guess I’ll be spending all of my spare time at the shop over the next few weeks but it was worth it for sure.