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Well... Where do I start? To say the least, the Nationals are tough!
We got a good start in practice because of the information we brought home from the race here 2 weeks ago. We made a few changes to the kart setup; lowered the seat and moved a little weight to the left because the new HT3 tires seemed to be feathering out pretty badly. This helped me get through the corners and we picked up about 3 tenths of a second.
My crew chief seems to be struggling with what to do between the last practice and qualifing because we were great in practice and then slowed a little in qualifying. Still, we qualified 8th in light the first day and 22nd in heavy the second. That's a lot better than things went in Daytona!
When it came race time for light I got a great start and went from 8th to 2nd in the first lap. Unfortunately, several karts in the back of the pack spun so we had to do a complete, single file restart. I raced well for about 6 laps and was passing for 3rd place coming out of turn 2 when my kart slipped up into the 3rd place kart. That slowed us down and the 5th and 6th place karts caught us going into turn 3. I guess you can't go 4 wide at Jasper. We all spun off the track and somehow the valve stem on my left rear tire got cut off. I ran the rest of the race with a flat left rear tire and still finished 19th.
The next day I started in heavy from 22nd. The race started as usual, someone spun and we had to go single file. No problem though because I raced up to about 10th place pretty quick. Then I began to really pick up on the kart ahead of me. We were going into turn one and I was afraid I would hit him so I tried to pass on the inside going into the turn. I guess I got too low because I hit the pylon and it flipped up and hit me in the head at about 40 miles an hour! Talk about getting your bell rung! Well, I wound up spinning across the track and by the time I got turned around and going again I was a lap down and finished in 26th.
One thing about the Nationals, you have no room for error. In other races you can make a little mistake and it won't hurt you that much but here, slip up and they will run around, over and even through you before you know what happened! Still, there is nothing like the Nationals. I can't wait to go to Aynor!
