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Race #1 at Columbia Motorsports Park
04-09-05
I can't believe it! I finally got to race my new car! Man was that fun!
We went over to the track on Friday because they had an open practice session scheduled for Friday night. It looked like rain but sometimes we get lucky so we went anyway and sure enough we got about 50 laps in before the rain came. That worked out pretty good because we got out of the track early enough to go out for a nice dinner with a few of the other drivers and their crew.
On Saturday it seemed like evening was never going to come. We drove around out by the track and went to a few stores and then finally around 3:30 pm we went over to the track to get ready for the race. We unloaded the car and changed the gear to get a little more RPM, aired up the tires, and then waited even more.
They had about 10 Fast Trucks there for a 50 lap feature and a few Open Wheel Modifieds and some Street Stock cars and us. We were the biggest group with 14 cars in all. During our first practice 2 cars broke their drive shafts and another car broke it's rear axle. He got the axles fixed but the guys with the broken drive shafts were out for the night. That gave us 12 cars for our race.
I have to start in the back for the first 5 races because I am a rookie. They split the cars into 2 groups for the heat races and I ran the second one. I had been trying to practice shifting without the clutch so I wouldn't loose the pack on the starts but on my first attempt it didn't work too well. I made the shift but the car revs up so fast that trying to shift was a waste of time. From then on I started in 6th gear and just took off.
My crew chief and I have been taking about how I can be aggressive but not take the chance of wrecking another car. I'll be on probation for a while so I don't want to mess up. I tried to pass the car in front of me a few times and eventually I did but it just isn't that easy even if you are a lot faster. One of the cars spun and that brought out a yellow. On the restart I just powered around the outside of the car in front of me and then down under the next one. That's where I finished the heat in 3rd place.
In the feature I started the race in the 6th position, 3 cars back on the outside row. By now I had the starts down so I was ready to roll. On the start we shuffled around a bit but I held my position in 6th until the yellow came out. One of the cars lost an oil line and put oil down all the way around the track. I came around turn 4 and there were 2 cars spinning in front of me. I keep my foot of the gas and went high while others checked up and I made it around them without a problem. That put me in 3rd but when you spin as a result of somebody else's fault and not as a result of contact on the racetrack, they put you back in your position as of the previous lap. So on the restart I was still in 6th place.
The 5th and 4th place cars were lagging back and I saw the leaders take off so I went high around the 5th place car but he was going to have no part of that. He finally got going and we meet coming out of turn 4. He hit me right in my left rear tire and turned me around in the middle of the front stretch. I tried to get the clutch in but it happened so quick I just couldn't do it before the car rolled backwards a little bit. Motorcycle engines are not designed to run backwards so if they do it basically destroys the starter. When I went to restart the motor nothing happen, the starter was history. I didn't know that you could push start the car so I just had the tow truck push me back to the trailer.
I guess if we could have gotten the motor started I could have gone back out and finished the race but I was pretty upset about getting spun out because my car was really fast and I just knew I could have won the race so my crew chief told me to park the car and cool off a bit. It turned out that it was probably a good idea that I stayed in because there were 2 pretty bad wrecks after that and when it was all over there were only 6 cars that finished the race.
One sort of funny thing happened though. We have been having a little trouble figuring out the tires and what tire pressure to run. While we were working on our cars after the first practice the driver in the car next to ours borrowed my air gauge. He couldn't believe his eyes when it said that he only had 6 pounds of air in his tires. He borrowed another gauge from someone else and it said he had 18! Turns out I had about 30 pounds of air in my tires! The only thing was I liked it that way so we didn't know if we should let some air out or just leave it that way. We decided to let a few pound out just to be safe and we probably should have let even a few more pounds out for the feature because the car wanted to skate around a little in the turns.
I'm going to get a few starters and a new air gauge and head back out to the track on the 23rd. If you are anywhere around Lake City Florida, come out and see me race. I think I'll do a little better next time.
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