2003 MSOKC HPV Champions

11 September - A Couple Of Wins For Tracy, A Big Scare For Dana

We have lift-off (the red flash is Dana's LR wheel).

Tracy pulled off a two wins in a row Saturday night further solidifying her second place standing in the Hume Performance Products Super Can championship. Dana, on the other hand, with three 2nd place finishes lost more of her margin over John Fox in the INFONETICS HPV Championship. John and Dana look to be taking it down to the very last race of the season. By the end of the night however, Dana was just happy to be in one piece as she experienced her biggest accident of her career while subbing for the injured Keith Hume in Spec 100.

Chris heads out to his corner

We were at the track early again to work on a few things that we thought may improve our performance in these last few races. It was a good thing we did since we discovered a problem with Tracy's clutch and spent a couple hours determining the source and getting it fixed. About the same time we learned that Steve Tatman, owner of Circleville Raceway Park, was a little short on corner workers. Tracy's boyfriend, Chris Bowman, has been at just about every race this year and is studying to be an Emergency Medical Technical - seemed like a natural. Meanwhile, Julie was back from Ashland for the weekend and filling in for Beth Hopkins in Scoring up in the tower. Which, of course, left the video cam work up to Lynn.

Dana driving the Hume kart commemorating Sept 11

Just to keep the Conlin SpeedSports shell game going, Dana found herself in the Hume Motorsports Spec 100 kart for the evening. Keith and Roy had prepared their kart with some very appealing graphics commemorating the 3rd anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks. When Keith got injured in a freak accident during testing, they asked Dana to stand in for Keith. Not having but two laps in the kart she agreed if she could start from the rear of the grid and not get in the middle of the Spec 100's guys points race.

Ryan Estepp pressured Tracy on her way to the make-up race win

When it came to the actual racing, first up was the postponed August 28 Super Can race for Tracy. She started on pole next to Steve Sharp going into the lead at Turn 1 stretching that out to 5 kart length lead onto backstraight. Ryan Estepp started in P4 and was into 2nd place on lap 2 when Sharp slid wide at Turn 7. He then steadily closed the gap on Tracy coming across the finish line right on her bumper. Waiting to go through the scales Ryan said if he had a couple more laps he could have found a way by. At the rate he was able to catch up to Tracy we had to agree. Maybe not even 2 laps.

HPV heat 1 - the first of 3 seconds for the night.

With the delayed Super Can race out of the way, it was time to get on with the September 11 schedule and for us, HPV Heat 1 was the first order of business. Dana drew inside Row 1, with John outside. Matt Rice started 3rd making up the last HPV entry for the night, a new low for the season. Steve Tatman had to sit the race out since he too was running the show from the tower in Beth's absence. They got an even start, John and Dana running wheel to wheel until he edged ahead at Turn 2 then got a fantastic launch off or Turn 4. The gap at that point stayed pretty much the same to end of the race.

The Spec 100 race was scheduled a couple of heats later and Dana started that one in the eighth and final position. By lap 5 she was up to 6th place in the unfamiliar kart but then spun back to 7th at Turn 8, right in front of Chris. It wouldn't be the last time that night. She recovered and finished 7th.

Tracy shakes hands with Suitts on the pace lap of the first SC heat

The first 9/11 Super Can heat had Tracy starting on the outside of row 2, right behind behind Dave Creech. Ohio Valley Kart Association was racing the next day and several OVKA Super Can drivers were entered for the chance to familiarize themselves with CRP. Tracy's row-mate, Norm Suitts offered a nice gesture of shaking hands with Tracy on the pace lap. The start sifted out evenly with Tracy maintaining fourth place on the road but second in the MSOKC standings as the OVKA guys were on non-spec tires. Tracy looked inside Suitts at on the run to Turn 7 but thought better of it. Meanwhile Jason Stucky was nipping at her heels. When Suitts ran a little wide at Turn 9, Tracy tried again. On lap 2, Stukey fell off road trying to hard to attack Tracy and almost simultaneously, up ahead, Suitts got run on Creech going into 5 but carried too much speed, ran wide tagged Dave on the exit. Both lost momentum Suitts ultimately veering off into the haybales. Before Dave could get back up to speed, Tracy got by into 2nd overall and 1st among her class. Brad Carroll and Ryan were mired down in the mid field congestion and never got a chance to run down the 99 kart.

Matt's carb problems let John get away at the start

Matt was on pole for HPV Heat 2 but he was having carburation problem all night which was too bad since he had a recent engine rebuild and had hoped to be mixing it up with John and Dana. As it was, the wrong mixture kept his kart from responding to the green flag. Instead, John surged ahead from his second place starting position and had 4 kart length lead by Turn 2. Dana got around Matt right away but she couldn't close the gap on John. She was about 2 seconds behind at the checkered flag.

Dana checks out the pipe after retiring in the second Spec 100 heat

Barely able to catch her breath, Dana was back in the Hume Motorsports Arrow for Spec 100 heat number 2: She again started 8th and hung back a bit at the start to avoid any Turn 1 "schmazles" (as David Hobbs calls them) and then started to look for a way to come up through the field. Before she could though, on lap 2 the pipe came off going into Turn 3, and Dana coasted to a stop on the backstraight.

Tracy's rear bumper got a work out all night

Tracy, coincidentally, also started in eighth position in the Super Can second heat. She, however didn't even get as far as Dana. In the rush down to Turn 3 we think Tracy (video tape review was inconclusive) got tagged by one of the Usual Suspects and spun around. Dave Creech had absolutely nowhere to go and slammed into Tracy's RF wheel hard enough to lift him up in his seat. Tracy saw the impact coming and just got her hands off the wheel in time. She had kept the motor running and attempted to resume the race but as soon as the kart moved, the wheels splayed out in different directions.

The hit was severe enough to break one tie rod, bend the other and break one tie rod end. Also, the steering wheel whipped around so violently that the data cable between the dash unit and the black box of the My-Chron was torn apart mid-length. Had she not had the presence of mind to take her hands off the wheel she may have had much worse injuries than the hyper-extended wrist she got. When she saw Dave coming and knew it was going to be a huge thump, she thought of all the in-car footage she's seen over the years in which the driver abandoned the wheel and thought the situation called for similar action.

There was some question as to whether we would be able to get her kart repaired in time for the Feature race. And not being able to start a race is our greatest fear right now for the Super Can points race. In fact, if a couple of teammates wanted to work together to take Tracy out or tear up her kart in a few races, her second place in the championship could be in jeopardy. But that question was answered by all of our friends that dropped what they we doing to help us get Tracy's kart repaired. John Fox, Mike Unger, Phil Unger, were in there with out us having to ask, doing what they could to help out. Randy Carroll brought over every tie rod he had, a very sportsmanlike gesture considering we've been rivals all season long. And so many people came by to ask if we needed anything, I can't recall them all. It is interesting that in all forms of racing, the people you fight with tooth and nail on the track are the first to lend you equipment and assistance in an effort to get you back out on the track.

Last lap of HPV Feature Dana presses John

For the HPV feature, John had earned the pole position with Dana outside. We had high hope that she could capitalize on the outside start as usually happens and negate the 4 points John had gained in the two heat races. Regular starter Bob Strawser was away for the weekend and Roy Hume was filling in and after a couple of wave-offs it was apparent he wanted a slow start. The HPVs don't respond well at low speeds and the slow pace caught Dana out. John got away much better and jumped to an early lead. Unlike our last feature against John where he stretched out a lead each lap, Dana kept the gap steady in the opening laps and the gradually caught John with 2 laps to go. The final 2 laps were tense as everyone watched to see if Dana could find a way by. On the last lap she was on his bumper and seemed to have two chances left to sneak by: going into Turn 7 and going into Turn 9. She just wasn't close enough at Seven and when she looked inside at Nine, she found John's kart had gotten a bit wider. John felt the bump from behind as he turned in for Nine and was probably expecting another one going into 10 but despite her best efforts, Dana had to settle for another second - only the second time she was shut out from at least one win all year.

Back in the "We will never forget September 11" kart, Dana was getting a little more comfortable with the Hume Motorsports ride and hoped to pick up a few positions of the eight laps. Starting P8 again, she hung back again until things settled down before turning up the wick. Up to seventh on lap 2 and closing on on Kevin Brown and Randy Ridder who were in a good fight for 5th. On lap three Kevin and Randy got together at Turn 8 and when Dana arrived on the scene a moment later the track was nearly blocked. She steered left, off the track to avoid hitting Kevin but caught her right rear tire on his left front and the effect was to launch her in the air.

Dana goes for a ride (arrow indicates her helmet)	Chris arrives to see if she's okay

Reviewing the tape, it looks like her kart was about three feet off the ground and got to about 60 degrees vertical before hitting the ground with the right side tires. She was very close to going over. I thought she was going over. The racers watching around me though she was going over. Steve and Tom Hickey up in the tower thought she was going over. Chris out on the corner thought she was going over. Dana thought she was going over. When the kart crashed down her arm slammed against the engine and generally got bruised up a bit but was otherwise okay. Chris was there within seconds of her coming to a stop and a familiar face at that particular moment was a comfort. For my part, I'm pretty sure that the little prayer I say when the girls go out had something to do with her staying shiny-side up in this one so I acknowledge that blessing here and now.

Having just seen her sister take a wild ride, it was time for Tracy's feature with a few new parts and a fresh alignment. With the strength of the heat 1 win she was gridded third for the Super Can feature in spite of the DNF in the second heat. At the drop of the green she slotted in behind Ryan while Brad took the lead form the pole. She was hounded closely for the first four laps but Jason Stukey had to back off in the name of safety as fought a fogging visor in the cool night air. Brad marched on to an other victory; Ryan, enjoying a great day, ran unchallenged to a second place finish; and Tracy took third.

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