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FKA Race #2 Cross Roads Motorplex, Jasper, FL
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Race Report
Boy was it good to get back to Jasper! We were getting a little tired of racing at Dirt Devils. Plus, we raced so much here last year that I think it was a big boost for our confidence level.
I guess the biggest news this week is the changes to the track. Over the winter they graded the track and pulled the clay that had washed down into the infield back up on the track. They cut the track about 15 feet down into the infield and about 12 inches down into the ground. This brought the banking up a good bit especially in turns 3 and 4. The track now measures about 30 feet shorter than it was and as a result several track records were broken during qualifying. All in all, everybody said that they liked the track better in fact I didn't hear one person say anything but good things about it.
The objective that we had for the weekend was to get the kart tightened up a little bit more and to stay focused on protecting my position on the track in the race. We have just not been that fast this year but my crew chief pointed out to me that the fastest kart doesn't usually win the race. It's the best driver that wins and you can't win if you let every body go past you. Well, that was the plan...
We tried a bunch of stuff in practice on Friday night and the kart felt a good bit better. We cut back a lot on the amount of prep we were using and ran some older tires that had a lot less rubber on them. The kart was working pretty good and the tires came in after about one or 2 laps but I was still just a little bit loose in the center of the turns. By the end of practice we figured that being a little loose would probably be a blessing on Saturday so we put our stuff away and went to bed.
On Saturday we didn't have to get up and run right a way because FKA doesn't let the Junior drivers out on the track until about 11:00 am. By that time the Seniors had already run the track in and we pretty much had the track that we would be qualifying on. We were real good in practice and the kart felt great. We were faster than we had ever been at this track. We wanted to try to put a little bit more gear on but we ran out of time so we decided to go out and qualify with the gear that we had been running. In Heavy we were about 4 tenths slower than the pole which was a new track record but we were over 2 tenths faster than we were here in the fall. In Lite we took off a tooth on the rear gear and went up a little on the air and did a lot better qualifying 4th just 2 tenths of the pole sitter's time.
In the first race I was focused on holding my position. When we took the green flag I stayed down coming off turn 4 but my motor wasn't coming up to speed as it usually does and I got nailed in the back by the kart behind me. I wasn't ready for that and let the kart get a little sideways which killed my momentum and allowed a couple karts to get past me going into turn one. I settled in in 8th and when I got going I was able to pass a few karts back up to 5th but I just didn't have the speed to catch the leaders. Just before the end of the race a caution came out for a spun kart and this kid who had spun a few laps earlier decided that he would like to start the race in 3rd and moved up ahead of all of us. The officials didn't catch it so I lost a position on the start and finished in 6th.
In the second race I got a good start and ran in 4th pretty much the whole race. The leaders were pulling away from me but I was staying ahead of everybody behind me. Then I came up on a slow kart in turn 3. It couldn't have been worse timing as I caught him just as we were going into the turn. He was down low and the track was so sandy that I was afraid to go around him on the outside so I had to get into the brakes. The 5th place kart dove under me and forced me up so I gave him the position and finished the race a few laps later in 5th.
We decided to stay over and test on Sunday to see if we could get the kart a little better for next weeks race and the Nationals that are coming in about a month. We tried a few things and then someone suggested that we take out a little camber in the right front wheel. Bingo! That was what we needed. We took off another 2 tenths and then my motor shut off. That was weird because all of a sudden it was silent and all I could hear was the wind rushing over my helmet. Turns out the we broke a rod.
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