May 7 should have been race number two for Conlin SpeedSports but an unforeseen conflict with a church event made some key members of the crew unavailable. So I took the opportunity to go out to the track to covertly gather information on our competition. Naw, we're not taking this too seriously.

The first thing our intelligence operation found was that we have no competition. The class our kart/driver package fits perfectly into is called Senior Briggs Heavy. In that class we'd be right at the minimum weight. Unfortunately, there were no karts entered for that class and appeared to have no entries in any races earlier in the season.

The alternatives are to race in Senior Briggs Medium where we're 27 pounds overweight or race in Senior Briggs Super Heavy and add 33 pounds to the kart somewhere.

I really don't know which would be easier. The only place we can really remove weight on the kart is from the driver. Surgery would be the fastest but a little drastic. A workout program and diet would be more sensible. Adding more weight to the kart is just as daunting. 33 pounds is a lot of weight to bolt onto something as compact as a racing kart - not mention placing so that it doesn't change the balance and therefore the handling.

Times for the Senior Briggs Medium winner were in the low 50s and high 49s - about 3.5 better than our best in our first race. The Super Heavy class karts were turning 54s but were carrying a lot more weight than we were when I set the 53s during the April 9 event.

Based on those times, we'd have or work cut out for us in the Medium class.

I was also interested in what tires were fast at Circleville and was relieved to see the Dunlap SL4s win several races. This meant that since these are the tires our kart was set up for we wouldn't have to go through the potential hassle of re-tuning the chassis (chamber, caster, wheelstance, tire pressures, etc) to a new tire design and compound.

So this little expedition told us a lot and gave us a benchmark to go from - or work up to.  A lot of work and a lot to think about before the next race on June 4.  Keep an eye on this space to see how it works out.