2003 MSOKC HPV Champions

23 - 25 July - A Wild Weekend

Karts on display at Mid Ohio Sports Car Course.

Our weekend started Friday morning at Mid Ohio Sports Car Course as we joined Bob Strawser and Mike & Noah Unger in our club's karting promotional booth during the Honda Super Cycle Weekend. The karts were left at Mid Ohio overnight and we were back there early Saturday morning. About 3 o'clock we packed everything up like gypsies avoiding the sheriff and high tailed it the 90 miles to Circleville Raceway Park. There, Dana raced both the HPV and the Super Can (Tracy and Julie were at a Christian Youth Convention in Florida) picking up two 4ths, two 2nds and two wins along the way. Home by 1:00 am and back at Mid-Ohio by 8:30. There is definitely something wrong with us but that is the weekend in a nutshell. Now for the details.

Dana explains the differences between the karts to a group of two wheel fans.

But first I want to follow up a mild rant I made in the July 10 report. In that report I complained about an incident in the Super Can feature in which all the drivers on the inside row of the grid moved up when Brad Carroll's kart stopped on the pace lap. I was expecting the line up behind Carroll to criss-cross their starting positions and therefore only move up one position. As it was all the drivers on the inside row moved up two positions while drivers on the outside row - including Tracy - moved up none. It was brought up at the July 24 driver's meeting and I learned that the drivers on the inside did exactly what started Bob Strawser wanted and expected them to do. This, I can see now, cuts down on the confusion and the possibility of getting tangled up before the race starts and doesn't delay the start. My bad, I stand corrected and feel better about the July 10 results.

Bob Strawser talks about racing 4 strokes while Noah Unger's Kid Kart gets checked out by others.

Friday at Mid-Ohio had pockets of racing fans taking breaks from watching the two wheel practice to stop by and pick up literature, watch the karting multimedia presentation we had going and ask about the karts. Saturday was more of the same but the pockets were more frequent and traffic increased three-fold over the day before. Unlike the crowd at last year's display during the Grand Am car races who's first question was almost always "How fast do they go", the motorcycle crowd's first question was almost always "What size motor is that?", an indication, I felt, of their greater understanding/appreciation of the mechanical aspect of the machines.

Mary Weir of Mid-Ohio gave us special dispensation to leave the Manufacturer's Midway before the end of racing (usually a big no-no) so that we could make it to our Saturday night race. We packed everything up and were on the road by 3pm. We were at the track by 4:30 and by 5:30 were ready to race but we had missed all practice. With Julie and Tracy in Orlando and Lynn in Indianapolis, Dana and I were The Team for this race. And rather than let Tracy's kart sit idle, Dana (who had a blast racing a heat for Tracy back in May) entered Super Can for kicks.

Dana pulled double-duty, racing the 99 kart as well as her own.

The Super Can race came up first and Dana drew 8th starting position out of about 12 entries. Not having any time in the kart since May, she had a little trouble adjusting the to higher engagement of the Super Can. On her HPV the clutch engages about 5000 rpm and she's gotten used to keeping the revs around there on the pace lap. The Super Can engages at over 8000 rpm and the motor needs to be kept up near that number on the pace lap. We hadn't talked about that before and on the pace lap Dana got caught out, rolling to a stop in the far end of the oval on the pace lap. (Why is it that on the rare occasion that Dana stalls, she's always as far away from the pits as possible?) But after a short sprint with the 30lb starter unit (didn't seem short at the time), I got her started and she resumes her starting position for the start.

Dana (left) gets a poor start in HPV heat 1.

Once the track was green she picked up a couple positions by well-timed overtaking and a couple more when a couple guys took each other out in front of her. She finished 4th, not bad for having just jumped into the kart with no practice.

Two races later, it was time for HPV heat #1 with Dana starting 3rd out of only four racers - HPV is again suffering from low entries despite a good field at the beginning of the season. She got a bad start and was DFL going onto the backstraight. She was able to get by Matt Rice at Turn 5 and then later past Steve Tatman at Turn 9. Once in second she had nothing for John Fox who was actually stretching his lead. We had to settle for second with the knowledge that John had everything working right and we didn't.

Dana found the 99 kart better behaved than her own.

Oddly, Dana was happy with the handling of her sister's kart but was complaining of bad handling on hers. So between heats we did the routine stuff to the 99 kart and made some chassis changes to the 13.

Second round of heats had Dana starting from P4 in Super Can but it wasn't long before she moved into second place behind Ryan Estepp. Ryan had really put it together and was on pace with the top racers in Super Can. Dana was ever so slightly able to reel Ryan in but she also had Brad Carroll right on her bumper the whole way. They had the crowd yelling as the three of them came up to the checkered flag. Dana had a run on Ryan coming out of Turn 10 and pulled along Ryan at the line as he raised his arms to celebrate his first MSOKC victory. The celebration was almost premature though - the margin was only about a foot. Ryan has been dedicated to Super Can this year and always shows a lot of enthusiasm and encouragement to his fellow racers and it was good to see him control that race like he did.

Heat 2 was a win but just barely.

Starting from the outside front row for the second HPV heat Dana got a good start but Matt, who gets better every time out in his HPV it seems, got a better one. Dana was able to get by Matt at 5 again but only because both drivers gave each other room. As expected John wasted no time in finding a way past Matt and Steve to challenge Dana for the lead. And he had us worried too, we weren't sure the changes we made would be enough. But although he was able to close up, he couldn't find a way past and Dana took the win.

Shortly after the break we all had a big scare during the Spec 100 feature as Eric Creech and Jimmy Curtis got together at the start/finish line halfway through the race. Eric took a horrible tumble as his kart went over. It was a particularly ugly crash as he seemed to spend an awful lot of time sliding on his helmet and visor. It was ten minutes or more by the time our EMT had Eric walking gently to the rescue vehicle but we were all glad to see him up at all. Later the news was even better as the report was nothing broken.

It was a reminder that what were doing can still be dangerous and the fact that it happened on the main straight right in front of the crowd and waiting racers was even more sobering. If anyone raced a little less aggressively after that they wouldn't have been faulted.

For the Super Can feature Dana found herself gridded 3rd but got shuffled back to fourth somehow (without Julie there we didn't get a video record of the night - what? you didn't think my memory was that good, did you?) behind Jason Stukey and Ryan. Ryan was looking for a way around Jason and Dana was looking for a way around both of them but no one made any mistakes and despite repeated attacks all race long that's the way they finished while Brad just checked out.

All that was left then was the HPV final with Dana starting on the outside of row one with John on pole. Dana timed the start perfectly (almost too perfectly starter Bob Strawser later implied). We had made a few more changes for the feature and Dana seemed to make the best of them pulling away a little each lap until she built a comfortable lead. The win was #30 for Dana and with the absence of Barry Hatcher it gives her what could be considered a commanding lead in the INFONETICS HPV Championship.

Our rig pulled up at home at the stroke of 1 am and was on the road again for Mid Ohio by 7:30 (Strawser still beat us there). In between the big races we were swamped with people looking to learn more about karting. At the end of the day, sleep deprived, over exerted and hoarse, we called it a day and a weekend.

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