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Race #5 at Lake City Speedway
06-04-05
I'm beginning to think I'll never find a race track that I don't like!
After looking at this track for about 2 minutes, my crew chief was ready to get back in the truck and head for the porch! I'll admit, the whole place was in pretty rough shape. In turns 3 and 4 it's obvious that they have had a bit of trouble with the cars leaving the racing surface and, just beyond the tractor tires and dirt embankment they have in the run off area, there is an electrical wire that hangs down as though you are supposed to jump it if you can! Add to this about a half of an inch of rain just before we got to the track and the fact that he really isn't that crazy about running on dirt and you can understand his concern but I could tell that this was going to be really fun.
The track actually looked a lot worse than it was because of how they prepare the surface. I guess they grade off the high spots and then put down some kind of oil. From the pits it looks like there are big ruts everywhere but the track was actually really smooth and had a lot of grip. If I hadn't driven through a big mud puddle left by the rain, I don't think my car would have been any dirtier than if we were racing on asphalt.
In the first practice the car felt sort of strange. I was used to running the gokart on dirt but not with springs and shocks. The car felt like it was just drifting and rolling everywhere but I found out that if I just concetrated on being smooth the car would sort of wind up where I wanted it to go. The track was a little slick as expected so we watched as the other classes practiced and it seemed that the track was coming around so we didn't make any changes to the car for the heat race.
I'm still starting in the back so I was the 8th car out of 9 in the heat. It took us a few trys to get the race started but eventually we got it going single file. I stayed in 8th place for a lap and then the 7th place car gave me the whole bottom of the track coming off turn 4. I moved to the bottom but something broke in his car and he came down right into me. I though I had a flat tire because the car was leaning over on the right front corner so I went to the pits. It turned out that when I hit the other car my right front tire climbed up the side of his car and the upper a-frame smashed into the side of the shock. This caused the piston in the shock to get stuck in the compressed position so it wouldn't allow my tire to come back down again. My crew had a real time trying to get that spring off but some how they managed and had my car ready in time for me to run the feature.
In the feature we had 2 cars that couldn't start the race so there were just 7 of us. I would have had to start 2nd to last anyway so crashing in the heat didn't really hurt me. When we took the checkered flag I set my sites on the 5th place car and he gave me the room I need on the second lap coming off turn 2 so I made the pass. The pole sitter broke on lap 3 putting me in 3rd place but there was a lot of ground to make up on the 2nd and1st place cars. I ran as hard as I could but there just wasn't enough time to catch them because they had cut our feature to only 10 laps. So, I finished the race and I finished in 3rd. That's my best finish of the year!
I think what really helped me this week is that my crew chief has brought in this short track racing expert named Jeremy Boddie to help me. Actually, he's just a real good friend of my dad's but he does know a lot about driving race cars from when he was a dirt track champion in Alabama. He walked me through every inch of the track and told me just what he would do. I tried everything he said and boy was he right. Thanks Jeremy!
Lake City Speedway is just up the road from Colombia Motorsports Park where we have been racing up until this week. I was really suprised when I went up to the stands and a lot of the fans I had at Colombia had decided to come over to this track to see me race. Boy was that cool! I know most of them aren't going to be able to get to Orlando to see me race so I'm sure going to miss them.
This week brings another accomplishement in that I will no longer have to start in the back! I've finally graduated to a full fledged TQ Late Model Driver status!
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