2003 MSOKC HPV Champions

10 April - Just About Ready

Another full day of testing made more full by another clutch failure but we accomplished a lot and we're pretty close to being ready for that first race.

The identical clutch failure as two weeks ago - spring tensioner snapping - is discouraging and a cause for some concern because this time I know I wasn't a bonehead. Francis of PKP Yellow Fin (who had been maintaining this engine prior to us purchasing it) happened to be at Circleville Raceway Park and said it had been a while since he'd seen that type of failure. He put it down to metal fatigue and supplied us with replacement parts. If it wasn't for him and his dealer truck full of spares, Tracy's kart would have been on the trailer early again. But I was able to make the necessary repairs using the grid area bleachers as my workbench, suffering only about four heart attacks when people came along and sat on the lower benches causing the whole structure shift suddenly and violently.

Meanwhile, Dana was dialing in her kart to the conditions. These tests, for her at least, have just become tuning exercises. CRP right now, with the new surface, is new each time we show up. Between CRP's unpredictable nature these days and the experience at Palmetto (thanks National Kart News) she's gotten pretty good at figuring out what she needs to go faster. It's getting to the point where she almost doesn't need input form me.

I was able to get Tracy's kart back together for her to get a few more good sessions out of the day. We spend two of them doing some very valuable clutch testing, learning a lot and recording some interesting and helpful data on our My-Chron. For the final sessions I simply told the ladies it was time to go out for their fastest times of the day. With that Tracy found a couple laps with no traffic that we were very, very pleased with. Don't know what the fast guys will be doing in her class come raceday but knowing where we started and and where we ended up gave us a pretty good feeling. Dana also fired off a bunch of laps (and in her typical fashion ripped off four in a row that were within .05 of each other and her best on this new surface and tires.

The only miscue of the day came when I was trying to signal Tracy and the guy in front of her wondered what I was trying to tell him. He got off the throttle, Tracy was deciphering my signal (2 fingers = 2 laps... I thought it was pretty straight forward) and when she looked back to the road saw she was closing in on the guy in front of her at a big rate. On the brakes hard just as she was turning in for the flat-out Turn One and the ends of her kart swapped and she slid off the track backwards harmlessly. I later apologized to the other driver involved because going out to the edge of the track I knew there was the potential for confusion. As Tracy and I commented later, we more or less teamed up to have that accident.

We have one more test to do on Tracy's kart and then we'll be set. That test will be April 24, the day before the first race of the season. We'll be getting J & J Racing's help in dialing in our karts for track conditions as close to race conditions as we will have seen. Conlin SpeedSports will also be hosting a Karting Intro seminar for Mid State Ohio Kart Club at 10am, a couple hours before the track opens for official practice. This class will be geared towards brand new kart racers and folks seriously thinking about going racing. We'll cover all the basics for getting a racing kart on the track and keeping it on the track as well as an overview of how their first racing day will go: safety tech, practice, getting grid positions, forming up on the grid, post-race scaling and tech inspection.

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