Race #6 at Columbia Motorsports Park
04-08-06

Not much to report today.

After checking the weather report all week we figured that there was little chance that we would get a race in. Still, we loaded up and headed to the track hoping for the best but mother nature would not cooperate.

We've been noticing an unusual wear pattern on our right side tires. Even though they don't seem to wear much they are cupping out on the inside of the tread after about 3 races. They also seem to lose grip at the same time. We run the Hoosier tires which feels great when they are new and they are not that expensive so we plan to replace the right sides every 3 or 4 races. We also decided that if the car felt good in the first practice we would save the tires by not going out for the second and third practices. Last night I think that might have been a bad idea.

In the first practice we tried something with the air pressure to get the tires to come in faster. I have had to wait on the tires to come in for about 2 or 3 laps. They say you can't win the race on the first lap but you sure can lose it if your tires don't have any grip. We had a few people tell us that if we went up on the air pressure the tires would come in faster. Then, we had other people tell us that going down on the air pressure would make them come in faster. We decided to go down a few pounds and see what that does. Maybe it works both ways but with a few pounds less the tires were there for me on the first lap.

SInce I was second in the prior race feature I had to start in the rear on the heat race. There was only 4 cars and only one of them was really fast. He was on the outside pole and I was behind the pole sitter. I had hoped that the pole sitter would go a little high and give me room to go under him on the start but he stayed low and let the second place car get a jump on him. It took me about a lap to get around the pole sitter but then I had about 10 car lengths to make up on the leader.

Because the rain was coming, the track asked us to cut our heat races from 8 laps to 6. I was gaining on the leader but my car was tight and I just couldn't get back in the gas as soon as I wanted too. I only had 4 laps to make up the distance and then just as we took the white flag my spotter told me that it was starting to rain. I knew I couldn't catch him and with rain in the air I decided to take it easy on the last lap and accept the second place finish.

Shortly after that, the rain came, and then the lightning and thunder, and then the power went out. Even if we would have ever been able to get the track dry, the pits were now about 6 inches of mud, so it wasn't long before the track called it a night.

We will still get to run the feature but we will have to wait until the next race on April 22nd. Now, I have to figure out if I was tight because I had the set up wrong, or because the tires came in faster, or both. Next race I'm going to go out for every practice just to make sure.