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Tracy		Dana

15 April - Good Start To New Season

Snow on the canopy is never a good sign at a kart race but we took everything Mother Nature could throw at us and pulled out a good day of racing which saw 17 TaG karts enter the opening weekend of the 2007 Bridgestone Great Lakes Superkarts! USA Pro Tour at New Castle Motorsports Park. Saturday racing was postponed a day making Sunday crazy and hectic day with two days of racing squeezed into one.

Our new Vortex Rok TT engines had a few minor problems but served us very well overall. The new power had Tracy running fourth in the Sunday Final before boyfriend Eric got by her late in the race on his way up from starting last. Dana finished eighth struggling with bad handling.

Many thanks to Mike Unger of KartWorks in support of the Vortex Rok TTs and Mike Mees who drove all the way from Chillicothe Sunday morning to help us out.

We knew going into the weekend the weather looked diabolical. Friday looked to be fair but Saturday and Sunday called for rain and snow. Nevertheless we were on the road for central Indiana by mid-morning.

Having received our new Vortex Rok TT engines only fortnight earlier, they had not so much as fired up before we unloaded the karts Friday and set up our sided canopy as a defence against the weather that was coming. Dana and Tracy went through the break-in process nicely and were eager to see what the motors could do. Tracy and Eric both got their chance but after enduring the boredom of the engine break-in session, when Dana pushed the start button to head out there was nothing but silence. Dave Creech tracked the source of the problem to a bad starter relay for which he was immediately promoted to Electronics Manager (congratulations Dave, I'm sure you will be very happy in your new appointment). We decided to let Tracy get up to speed and then put Dana out in the 99 kart to get some track time. After Tracy's second session we pulled the relay off her kart and plugged it into Dana's to give her some track time in her own kart.

The overall impression of the Vortex Rok TT was favorable from Dana, Tracy and Eric. Speed/top end was there and the engine seemed to have a definite bottom-end advantage over the PRDs we were used to. Tracy's My-Chron dashboard/data acquisition unit started acting flaky and eventually quit working at all. So we relied on the readings coming off Dana's (an advantage of racing two nearly identical packages) to tell us what was going on with both karts. Among other things, we were seeing a top speed of 1 to 2 mph higher than ever before at that track. While the relay failure was disappointing (failure after only 20 minutes of operation?) it was not a big problem and we were once again expecting some teething problems. A quick call to Mike Unger confirmed he had a spare relay and he would be out Sunday.

Sunday was okay because Terry Riggins of SKUSA Great Lakes announced that, having watched the weather all day he was postponing the Saturday schedule until Sunday. Saturday was continuing to look dismal while Sunday was offering hope. We'd try to get both days of racing in on Sunday.

Saturday became a leisure/social day as the wind blew out of the northeast and pushed low gray clouds with it. While the ladies all took the opportunity to study, work on college assignments and rest, I got to the track and into our temporary garage to tend to the last minute details I was kept from doing for lack of time. Among those were the application of the GL SKUSA required sponsor decals and the new number kits that had arrived only Friday (thanks Todd for swinging by the house to pick them up) from BGR Graphics. The tent time gave me a chance to visit with Dave Creech a bit as he, Joann and Eric motorhomed it there in the pits. I was happy for Dave's help in dismounting and mounting the eight new Bridgestone YHCs for our two karts. About noon the rain started and added a chill followed a few hours later by sleet, ice balls and then snow. The kerosene heater made the tarpaulin garage bearable but I was happy for the chance to join the Creeches in the warmth and dry of the motorhome about 6pm. A nice group dinner at the New Castle Applebee's finished off the day.

Going to bed there was a chance that we'd be racing in the rain Sunday morning and the dry in the afternoon, a complication I wasn't looking forward too. Squeezing two days of racing into one would be demanding enough without having to switch to wet settings in the morning and back again mid day. I was up at 4:16am wondering what was going on on the other side of the curtains. I tried to convince myself to go back to sleep and that taking a peek would have not useful purpose at that time. Still, I listened for droplets or ice balls hitting the window pane and was relieved to hear none. The the thought occurred to me that the wind may be attacking from the other direction. For all I knew there could be sheets of rain lashing the opposite side of the building and falling silently yards beyond my window. For that matter, there could be massive drifts sweeping from my window out across the parking lot.

I stumbled to the window and stuck my head through the curtains. Damp. Only damp with definite signs of the wind blowing it drier. I went back to bed and laid awake thinking about how dumb it was to get myself all awake over something I could do nothing about.

Also up early was Mike Unger driving towards New Castle with a cache of Vortex parts, one of which was marked for special delivery. Mike actually beat us to the track and was watching the start of the Malaysian Grand Prix on the NCMP Racer's Grill big screen TV. After the first couple laps it was time to get to work on our own race. Stepping over the snowy slush that surrounded the canopy we got to work. Mike installed the relay and a test firing confirmed it as the solution. All that was left was fuel, coolant and air. The two early morning practice sessions went off without a hitch with the exception of a quick spin by Eric on the entry to turn 1 courtesy of a still-damp patch.

The track was still cold and green but dry when the karts went out for Saturday Qualifying Sunday morning. Eric made the most of his new engine package by earning 5th fastest time in the session right behind his rival for last year's MSOKC Spec 100 Championship, Barry Hatcher. Eric had edged Barry out of the championship last year but Barry edged a time a little over 3 tenths better in the quali session. Tracy had a decent run putting in a 1:11.43 for ninth starting position and just .09 ahead of Dana.

That meant row five was 100% Conlin SpeedSports with Eric up two rows directly in front of Tracy. Unfortunately, before Eric had a chance to advance the slowed and retired with the nose ballast flopping around between his feet causing problems with acceleration and breaking. Tracy had gained a position on the first lap and her boyfriend's retirement put her up another notch into 7th, where she finished. Dana had some trouble on the first lap and fell several positions but then began clicking off competitors every couple of laps. By lap 11 of the 16 lap race she was back up to 8th behind her sister. In fact to get there she put in a slightly quicker fastest lap than Tracy.

A short lunch break followed to separate"Saturday racing" from "Sunday racing". Eric got his weights secures and we made some handling changes in anticipation of the track warming and rubbering in.

The Sunday practice and qualifying were combined in the interest of time. At some point the official scoring kicked in and recorded laps to determine starting position. For some reason Dana only had three of her laps scored (compared to Tracy's nine) and they were all during laps in which she was having an engine problem. That problem turned out to be a broken reed, an apparent weak area of the new engines. The result was a lowly 13th fast time. Tracy was having no troubles with her Biesse/Vortex Rok TT and got down to a 1:10.2 which was good enough for 9th again. Eric, maybe frustrated by his retirement from the Saturday Final found a little extra and clicked off a 1:09.579. What was even more significant that the gain was that he out-qualified Barry (who, by the way, has a long list of national-level karting achievements) and was only .05 off former SKUSA champ Anthony Savalle, also using a Rok TT.

We replaced the reed on Dana's engine but she would have her work cut out for herself starting last in the Sunday Pre-Final. Tracy started 9th but lost one position somewhere on the first lap. But while Tracy fell backwards, Eric jumped ahead a position, moving up to 4th in the first few corners. But by halfway he was slowing and with two laps to go Eric coasted off the track at Turn 3 with a broken reed. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Eric and Dave were so absorbed in diagnosing the problem, they forgot to roll their kart across the scales for an official finish - otherwise known as a DQ. Tracy wasn't happy with her kart's handling but hung in for 9th place. Dana was also struggling but not so much with the handling as the engine being down on power and managed only to get up to 11th by the time the checkered flew.

Thinking the reed problem was becoming an epidemic we suspected we shattered another one on Dana's kart as well as Eric's. Eric's reed was missing a chunk in the exact spot as Dana's had been after qualifying. But an inspection of Dana's reed after the Pre-Final found it intact. But with lap times over a second off of Tracy's times (and Tracy was slowed by handling issues) there was a definite problem somewhere. It was Mike U that proposed that the battery didn't have enough charge to deliver full spark. As we had discovered earlier in the day, the Vortex Rok TT engine does not recharge the battery and (even worse) doesn't generate its own electricity to power the ignition system. It was the only explanation that made sense and based on that, we swapped the battery.

The Final had Barry Hatcher starting 7th, right in front of Tracy who was right in front of Dana who was right in front of Eric. It was like the Central Ohio Kart Express train. Tracy more or less followed Barry through traffic and attrition to where they were running 4th and 5th by lap 5. When Savalle and Barry got together on the long straight heading towards the Interstate (words were exchanged at the scalehouse leading one to deduce that it wasn't just a racing incident) and ricocheted Barry off into the green distance, Tracy found herself comfortably in 4th place.

But her comfort level was in jeopardy within a few laps. Eric was tearing up the charts having started last (and probably less that pleased with himself for scoring no points in the pre-final) and closing in on the 99 kart in great chunks. By lap 10 he was looking for a way by and by lap 11 he had found it. There was no slowing him down and in the process of picking off his competitors he was the 3rd fastest kart on the track behind winner Marshal Vortriede and Tom Birchard, even posting a lap faster than Savalle and his Rok.

So considering we had done zero pre-season testing and had a condensed race schedule to deal with on out first outing with the new Vortex Rok TT engines, 4th, 5th and 8th place finishes aren't too ugly. A few bugs to work out with KartWorks and J3 Competition (the Vortex Rok TT importer) and we'll be we'll be all set for the rest of the season.

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