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Race #4 at Columbia Motorsports Park
05-21-05
Well, I guess you could say I've taken a few steps backwards but it's probably a good thing.
Last week I didn't do a race report because we were just going to go to Orlando Speedworld and run a few practice laps to see if we had everything fixed after my wreck. It turned out that a few of the other drivers thought it was a good idea too so the next thing I knew we had a race on. Things were going pretty good until the feature race started and then I messed up on the start and got the car side ways coming off turn 2. Like the week before, I over corrected and drove the car right into the wall. Again! This time I bent the frame so we had a real busy week getting ready to race again to say the least.
By Friday night we had the frame fixed and the body back on and we were ready to get back to racing. On Saturday it felt like the first time I had raced the car. The butterflies were back! My crew chief said that I should just take it easy and not worry about where I finished and just concentrate on finishing so that's just what I did.
You may remember that we have been struggling with the car being lose in the center of the turn. The things that usually work to fix that type of a problem didn't seem to help. We switched the front springs and ran a stiffer spring in the right front. That should have helped but the car felt even looser than before. It seemed to make the car lift the left front tire off the ground and that would make the right rear tire come up more too. The more we thought about it we realized that, because of the way our rear suspension is designed, this would make the rear tires steer to the right in the turn which would make it feel loose. So, we made an adjustment to the trailing arms to see if that would fix it. Well, it sure did but we went a little too far and now the car was tight all through the turn.
Still, I just focused on finishing the race. I'm still required to start the race in the rear so I started at the end of the inside row. There was one car behind me for the first several laps and I was loosing ground to the other cars in front of me. Then, at about lap 5, the car behind me go under me in turn 3 and we got together and spun. Someone told me that, rather than trying to correct the car, if I just let go of the wheel the car would straighten itself out so I tried it. I sat and watched as the wheel spun one way and then the other. I wound up down on the apron and I would have been able to just get back in line but my rear tires were off the ground so I had to wait for the tow truck to push me up the track a little.
When the race re-started I was dead last and the car was so tight in the turns that everybody just drove away from me. 2 cars eventually dropped out of the race so I finished 6th out of 8 cars and didn't hurt the car so I guess you could say it was a pretty good night.
The next morning I was invited to speak at a church in Alachua. I have never done anything like that before. It was a special service they were having which was being run by the kids in the church and they thought it would be cool to have me come and talk about racing. The talk went real well! My crew chief asked me which made me more nervous, racing the night before or preaching on Sunday. Considering what I've been going through lately, both made me a little anxious but it all turned out real good after all was said and done.
Now we have a few weeks off and then we have to get ready for our first dirt track race of the year. After all the kart racing I did on dirt you would think I would be real excited about that but I really don't know what to expect. I think I'll just stick to the plan of focusing on finishing and see where that takes me.
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