Race event #5 was pretty much the same story as the others - we haven't found the combination that puts us up with the leaders. But the real fun and excitement was once again after the races, during free practice.

Let's begin with the end

It was only as we were preparing to get the girls out for some practice at the end of the day and after the crowds had thinned a bit that Julie noticed a familiar face on the way to the grid. It had somehow gotten past us that racing legend and Central Ohio resident Bobby Rahal was in attendance as his son Graham was racing in the junior class.  He was fairly conspicuous in his business casual shirt and slacks and Gucci loafers but I guess we were so embroiled with our own little dramas that our attention was never drawn.

However, once we did realize he was there (they were packing up) it certainly seemed to inspire Dana.  She immediately began turning 54 second laps and then worked her way through the 53s.  By lap eight she had nailed her first ever 52 second lap and on her last lap she clicked off a lap that was only .17 off of my best lap from earlier in the day!

Tracy, too, went out and was quickly up to speed with a string of 55s that were within .3 of each other.  She then went on to find a lap that improved on her personal best. She would have likely improved further had it not been troubled by traffic.

A challenge is issued

Knowing that Dana could find another couple tenths if she needed to, I offered up a family challenge to her: If she could beat or equal my time (52.72) we'd hit the Dairy Queen on the way home.  Now with the whole team behind her she set out for her second session.  But while the 2 tenths were thought to be within her reach, the challenge was also placed to see how Dana would handle the extra pressure.  She had shown time and time again how well she could do when improving at her own pace but it was time to see how she'd do with a goal set for her.

As I half-expected, Dana was too eager to find those couple of tenths and found herself out in the grass on laps 3 and 4 and making time-consuming mistakes on other laps. But to her credit, with laps running out (she was given the "two laps" and "one lap" signals) she was able to settle herself down and pull out a 52.70 on her last lap.  Having the presence of mind and self control while driving at speed to talk yourself down is an admirable trait and is another feather in her helmet as Dana continues to impress.

New Team Test Driver?

Tracy also continued to impress - even if she holds herself to higher standards. One of the driver qualities most desired by race teams is the ability to crank off nearly identical laps. For testing, this consistency and predictability reduces the driver variables from the results and give a more accurate indication of changes to the machine.  Maybe Tracy should be our test driver instead of me.

Throughout her entire second session, except for a lap were she had to miss someone who had spun out in front of her, her times never varied more than .5.  This is desirable for seasoned drivers but extraordinary for someone who had never even driven a motorized anything until six months ago. Unfortunately, Tracy's has trouble appreciating that at this point.  Although she improved her best-ever time, she was hoping for a greater improvement than she got. What we need to do is spend an entire afternoon at the track and evaluate Tracy's technique in every corner and work with her on lines and carrying more speed through the corners. She seems to have a feel for the kart on the road but needs to work on where on the road she is at any given point. Once she has the technique down, she'll be fast and consistent and we'll have to provide her with a hefty retainer as test driver to keep her here on the family team.

Introduction To Passing 101

As Tracy was running her second session, Dana and I were talking about what she could expect if she ran the Powder Puff event in late August.  It was obvious she had a feel for the kart and could lap quickly but she had a valid concern about driving in traffic and passing.  Another racer, John Gearhart must of overheard us talking. He quickly and graciously offered Dana their kart to go out and chase her sister around. We knew Tracy didn't want Dana out there with her so we arranged for Dana to go out again in our kart and me to go out in the Gearhart's kart.

I took up the lead and ran a little off the pace so as to be in her way a bit - that way she could get a feel for maintaining a comfortable following margin. After a few laps I got a bad exit off of four and onto the backstraight and Dana pulled out to make her first real pass. It was a textbook pass, overtaking me by virtue of more speed down the straight and was clearly ahead as we entered the braking zone. She owned the corner outright and just about the time I said to myself, "that was perfect", I realized she wasn't slowing down enough to compensate for the bad line she was now on. Being in the middle of the track to make the pass rather than on the outside edge, there was no way she could carry the usual speed through the corner.  But we forgot to talk about that before we went out.  Oops. (I said "oops".)

Dana shot virtually straight off the corner despite a massive effort to turn the kart.  As I drove by her, turning to watch her spin two or three times through the grass, it was like the in-car camera shots from NASCAR races where the camera in one car follows the spinning car as it goes past.  The recently mown grass added a comical element to the image. The grass was long and there was a lot of it and as Dana twirled around and around, a plume of grass clippings swirled around her and accumulated in huge piles on every flat area on the kart. When it finally came to a stop, it could be considered sufficiently hidden from aerial surveillance camouflaged as it was.

We got her back on the track and resumed but before she could get another run at me the kart broke the chain and we were done for the day. The plan now is for Dana to do her next practice session trying overtaking lines into corners and staying on the track on the exit.  In the meanwhile, a tip of the helmet to John Gearhart and his team for their gracious offer.

The rest of the day

We weren't racing with our regular club, Mid State of Ohio Kart Club but rather the Ohio Valley Kart Club - so our usual suspects in the Briggs Medium class were nowhere in site. We felt (again) that we had reason for higher expectations because we had made some adjustments to the clutch that Mike Unger and Kevin Picklesimer had suggested. We hadn't had time to test the change but we felt we would be close and, heck, anything would be better than where we were.

Actually, the fact that we were racing at all was a bit of a surprise since the weather forecast was almost guaranteeing thunderstorms throughout the day. We went to bed Saturday night packed up but with little hope of actually going. But it was dry in the morning and we tentatively headed out for Circleville. Somehow it managed to stay relatively dry all day.  There was a sprinkle during our second heat and one other race was stopped because a shower dampended the track. Other than that, it just threatened.

The clutch felt better but imagine my surprise when in practice I found the kart handling poorly. In the past I've always been fairly pleased with the handling but suddenly I had way too much grip. Several times in practice the kart "bicycled" in the middle of corners in some cases requiring correction to get the wheels back down again and in every case unnerving the driver just a bit. In one case, turn 4, the "hairpin" as I call it, my correction to keep it from going over resulted in spearing straight off the tack at a nearly 90 degree angle. For just a moment, I thought I would make it out into the corn.

The track being stickier was surprising since the ambient temperature was about the same as last time out but overcast skies meant lower track temps which should have reduced the stick. We have learned from other racers that the Margay chassis tends to stick too well in very hot conditions (perhaps we should be looking forward to cooler weather). And there had been a lot of rain in the area the week before this race so we supposed it possible that a lot of oil and grease had been washed away from the track surface that we had gotten to know and love (well, like anyway). Nevertheless, we were turning 53s right away but had been hoping for so much more.

For the first race we increased our tire pressures to reduce some of the grip and the bicycling problem was a little better. But then, for the first time since we bought the kart, it had a definite understeer problem. All the sharp right hand turns were plagued by a push with turn-in especially affected - I couldn't turn in early enough to compensate. It had the worst effect on lap times at turn four, one of the most important corners on the track since it leads onto the long back straight. Lose rpm there and you're slow down the straight.

We lowered the pressures in the front tires but left the rears at the higher value to give us more grip in the front.  In race two this helped a lot but the handling balance still wasn't quite right - a push still nagged.  The second race pointed out though that our problems weren't just in the handling. From a good starting position we got gobbled up by turn 3 - turns 1 and 2 not giving us understeer - on what seemed to be power again. The clutch adjustments to engagement speed we made seemed to indicated that we may have over-adjusted and we later learned from Butch McGraw that having the engagement too high could be as detrimental as having it too low. More adjustments and testing seem to be in order in this department.

For race three we keep the same difference in front and rear tire pressures but decrease them overall - if we were gonna push maybe we could do it without running out of road was the idea. That just brought back the bicycling problem although not as bad. So we were left to ponder, once again, where a second can be found.  On a ten corner track like Circleville Raceway Park, that's only a tenth of a second in each corner. Put that way it sounds like it should be easy.

But if this were supposed to be easy, everybody'd be doing it. And we probably wouldn't be interested.
 

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