2003 & 2004 MSOKC HPV Champions
2004 MSOKC Super Can Runner Up

19 June - Can't Catch A Break

A crack (at left end of longest slot) cut testing short and kinda weirded us out..

Having made some good progress in a test session since our last race, our karts were finally on pace with the leaders. In fact, as Dana made up ground on her way to a second place in TaG Seniors Heat 2 she was clearly the fastest kart on the track. However, rare driving errors while each lady was contending for a top position kept them from getting the results they wanted. But as they say, that's racing.

That test session was a couple days before the race when Dana and I were able to get our work schedules in sync and get out to Circleville Raceway Park for a Friday afternoon and evening session. It was really the first chance we had all year to systematically try various set-ups with the new tires and the new engine. We learned a lot in a few hours. We were feeling pretty good and were doing one more session before calling it a day when we had the second stub axle failure in three days. Both times Dana could feel something going wrong with the kart through the steering wheel and came into the pits before the part failed completely at high speed. And it is the prospect of a high speed failure, the result of which would be a massive, sudden change of direction that unnerved us a bit. The first failure we dismissed as residual damage from the big crash Dana was involved in back at BeaveRun or just simply metal fatigue after a couple years of service or just a bad part. But when the brand new replacement part failed with only a couple hours of track time we got a little weirded out. Fortunately, we were able to track Rocky Johnson (who is quickly becoming the Conlin SpeedSports team welder) down on Saturday to not only repair the broken part but to reinforce the arm to prevent future fractures. Had we not been able to get the stub axle's arm reinforced, we would not have entered Sunday's TaG race at all. We were fortunate to have avoided at-speed failures twice. We were not going to chance a third time.

We were pleased with the performance of both karts after Sunday morning's practice and were really encouraged by both ladies' front row draws - especially Tracy's pole position - for the first heats. But any hopes we had for a Spec 100 win to avenge Tracy's rained-out win back in May faded when Charlie Hughes won the long fight down to Turn 3. There Tracy was forced to slot in behind Charlie but it hurt her entry and exit of Turn 4 which, in turn, hurt her speed on the backstraight. Vaughn Horvath capitalized on that and challenged her in the braking zone for Turn 5. Determined not ot lose another position on the first lap, Tracy went into 5 along side Vaughn but in giving him room to race she found herself off line on the dirty part of the track with a little too much brake applied. She looped backwards off the track and by the time she got her kart out of the grass and back on the blacktop, the field was half a lap ahead. She finished 8th.

Have tungsten, will travel. Rocky to the resuce..

In Spec 100 Heat 2, Tracy was of course at the other end of the starting grid in nineth. By the end of the six laps she had worked her way up to sixth but that race illustrated just how close everyone is in that class. It is very hard to make a clean pass and every little mistake loses ground to the others. Tracy's frustration continued when the starting order was posted for the Feature race: her combined results of the two heats earned her only DFL. Again, she soldiered on to finish 6th but she couldn't help but wonder how the feature would have gone had she finished in the top three of the first heat.

Dana's day didn't go much better even though she had a couple of second place finishes to show for her efforts. In the first TaG heat Dana started from the pole too but was also out raced by Jim Martin to Turn 2 where she stayed for the rest of the race. In the second heat she started fourth and after a couple of laps looking for a way around Larry Stukey got past and set about closing on Jim at a rate of almost a second a lap. Unfortunately the gap was about 3.5 seconds with only 3 laps left in the race.

In the TaG Feature polesitter Martin kept the advantage going into Turn 1 but Dana stayed close. She would say later that she felt she could bide her time and make a pass of the lead late in the race. But she never got the chance to try it as coming out of Turn 7 on lap 3 she dropped two wheels off the track. We both - Dana from the driver's seat and me from the observation deck - knew the implications of that mistake. We had discussed earlier in the day that the large sprocket we were using was very close to the ground and vunerable to damage if the kart was anything but level on the pavement. Sure enough, a little over a lap later coming out of Turn 8 the engine zinged and Dana immediately pulled off the road and coasted to a stop. A few mangled teeth confirmed that the sprocket had made contact with the ground and permitted the chain to jump off.

It would be easy to look at our run of bad luck and get discouraged with regards to the Mid State Ohio Kart Club Vega Tire Championship but only four races have been run in the series and with three "drops" (races that are not counted towards the championship) one could say the season is just starting. In fact, once we drop Dana's worst three race and Tracy's worst three races we're only 4 points out of the TaG lead and only 8 points out of the Spec 100 lead. But, that also means if we've used up our three drops already, every one of the remaining 8 races in the MSOKC championships has got to be a good race for us. The pressure is on.

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