CFK Series - Race #4 Speedway Park, Fruitland, FL September 13th, 2003     Photos load one after the other. Depending on your modem speed, there maybe a short delay between images.

Race Report

Well, I think we learned something here! We haven't raced this series this year but we didn't have a race to go to for over a month. So, when we found out that there was a day race at one of our favorite tracks and we could just go and have a good time without worrying about points, we couldn't resist. It seemed that the "No Pressure" atmosphere allowed us to really shine because we just had a great day!

We drove over to Fruitland Park on Friday night for practice. The track has gotten progressively sandy over the last year or so and prepped tires are a must. We really don't have a real soft set of tires because we don't do a lot of night racing so we had to take a set that had some rubber on them and soak them down at the track the best we could. Still, when I hit the track we were pretty good and as my crew chief kept working on the tires we got faster and faster.

I don't know if it was because I have raced here so much before or I just was "in the zone" but I got in that kart and it was like I had been driving it all week. Usually, after a few weeks without racing, I have to get my rhythm back with a few good practice sessions before I can drive the best line. Everything was just falling together almost effortlessly.

On Saturday we went out for the first practice and the track was already a second faster than we had run the night before. Since we got the body mounted on the kart properly, the kart has been really free and tends to want to slide in the turns if we don't have enough rubber on the tires. So, my crew chief decided that, until we started to push, we would stay with the preps and deep rubber. Everybody else was trying to get off the rubber and get on hard tires but they were just sliding all over the place. We wound up running the same tires all day with just a slight increase in tire pressure for qualifying.

Another thing we were trying was letting the motor turn up a little higher. I'm not sure if the crew chief was just a little lazy about changing gears or he actually planned this but we revved the motor over 300 RPM higher than we usually do. When it came time to qualify I wasn't the fastest in the sprint kart but I was right there with them. I qualified 2nd in heavy, 3rd in lite only .04 of a second off the pole! In the champ we were awesome and sat the poll by over 4 tenths of a second!

My crew chief has been really stressing the need for me to stay in the groove and hold my position so that I can race with the leaders during the final laps. I guess I get a little excited and want to pass before I should so the goal for the weekend was to stay in line and stay in the groove and wait for the kart in front of me to slip up before i pass. But, when the races started, I had nobody to follow! In the first race which was heavy I got the jump on the pole sitter and quickly got the lead. I ran about 15 laps with my lead increasing every lap until I was about a 1/3 of lap ahead of the second place kart. Then, I guess a kart got down in the soft stuff in the center of turns 1 and 2 and threw sand out on the track. When I hit the turn I lost traction and spun. I got the kart going again and fell back in line in 5th. With just a few laps to go I got by the 4th and 3rd place karts to finish 3rd. In the lite race, and the champ, I just took off and won both of those races with over a 1/3 of a lap lead on the field.

Now it's time to prepare for the last state race. I wish I could say that it's "No Pressure" but we have a chance at a pretty good finish for the year. Maybe we can convince ourselves that we will finish better if we just relax a little bit (a lot!). We'll see...