Friday, June 17, 2011

Another Friday Night in the Kart...Carnage Ensues

Wah! Crazy night tonight racing. I completely changed the setup on my front end. Got out 4 scales, checking nose weight and cross weight. Cut the lead bar in two and moved 6 pounds to the nose, to try and cure the push in and loose off. Handling improved on a hot slick race track. Still a bit loose, but loose is fast if you can hang on.

Warm up session felt good. Heat 1 Started 3 rd to last out of 8 karts by number draw, lap 2 got wild we went 3 wide in to turn 4. I came out of the lap in second, but the carnage behind me brought out the yellow and the field reverted to the previous lap. Restart was bad for me and I only gained one spot.

Heat 2 got crazy. We had a red flag thrown for a big wreck. Well someone hit me in the left rear and my rear tire launched him into the air, and the kart behind him driven by the lone gal in the field hit him and launched her right over the hay bail wall, and flipped her over into the catch fence, the kart rolled and landed on top of her. The guy that launched off me busted up his kart a little but was able to continue. And another guy went off the track into the wall with them. Me I just felt someone hit me, and looked over my shoulder and saw the nose of the kart and kept going. I ended up finishing terrible in that heat, 3rd to last. And the gal, had no padding on her steering column post, well she caught a bolt that scraped the inside of her thigh a few inches long. They put some disinfectent and gauss on an taped it up. She's a trooper, she want to get back and race the feature, but the track officials held her out.

25 lap Feature I started 7th out of 8 karts. About 9 laps in I was in last, got caught up in a slide with another kart that damn near spun out in front of me and lost all my momentum. Later my old man got spun, so gained those spots. My tire pressure adjustment was completely wrong. Yellow came out, single file restart, passed a couple karts. Finished 4th, held off my old man for the last 6 laps in a back and forth dogfight. 4th was actually 2nd in our engine class. My engine is not right. My oldman has built himself a new engine, so I'm going to try his current engine. He's definitely faster than me, so will see if its the engine or the driver.

My oldman at 64 years old won the 2nd heat race. To give you an idea on the speed, someone radar gunned us at the end of the straight away, we are hitting 50-55 mph, most everyone is running mid to upper 11 second lap times on an 1/8th mile oval.

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