Support our team - make your next hotel reservation through this link

Dana			Tracy

5-6 May - New And Strange, Old And Familiar

Dana sets up for one of three super-tight hairpin turns.

The first weekend of May was a busy one for us - busy but fun. Both the street race in Anderson, Indiana on Saturday and the Mid State Ohio Kart Club race on Sunday were non-championship, non-stress, non-thrashing affairs. We experienced a new street circuit that was unlike any kart racing we've done before and got to race with our friends (and in Tracy's case, her boyfriend) at our local club track.

Dana and Tracy struggled to come to grips (literally and figuratively) with the very tight Anderson Mayor's Cup layout. It featured three super-tight hairpin turns and one super fast downhill sweeper. Being only our second street race we're still learning how to set up for racing on the slick city streets. But Eric showed us that we really couldn't use that excuse because he was a dominant force all day. Pretty impressive considering Anderson was his first street race ever! In the 10 lap prelim he moved from 10th to 2nd and then led 24 of the 25 lap feature. Unfortunately, the one lap he didn't lead was the one that mattered most. Dana and Tracy finished finished 5 and 6 positions behind him at the end of the Final.

The engine was barely cool on the Monster Truck (our Excursion tow vehicle) when we stumbled out of the house Sunday morning to head to Circleville Raceway Park. Dana had some wedding planning that needed her attention and passed on the MSOKC race but Tracy was game to go out and race against some old rivals including Eric. In fact, Eric and her made it a Biesse Vortex Rok TT 1 - 2 in the feature race.

Tracy had an up and down day..

We arrived in Anderson early Saturday having only a vague idea of what we were in for. Entries were down a bit, we were told, largely due to the WKA Manufacturer's Cup race at Michiana Raceway Park in South Bend, 150 miles north. In addition to our extended team of Eric, Dave and Joann Creech we were joined by Rocky Johnson, Keith Hume and Matt Tangeman. We were surprised by how short and tight the track was with three hairpin turns with one line through each.

Two rounds of practice followed a brief driver's meeting and it wasn't long before we found we hadn't shaken the same problems we encountered at the first Great Lakes SKUSA race a couple weeks before. Dana had another ignition relay failure and Tracy's MyChron data acquisition unit was shutting itself off again - despite having been to the MyChron service center in Roanoke, Virginia, in the interval. These problems and just learning the new track kept us from working much on the setup and we were off. There was no qualifying session - starting positions for the TaG Senior preliminary was determined by the order in which the entries were received. As such Eric started 8th, Dana 9th and Tracy 10th in a 13 entry field.

Understeer doesn't get much worse than this.

At the end of the first lap it was Eric, Dana, Tracy, 5th, 6th, 7th. Lap 2 saw Dana get freight-trained at one of the hairpins and fell to 11th. Tracy was trying to follow Eric to the front but only made it as far as 5th before falling back to 7th where she finished. Eric was in second place by lap 3 and hung on to finish there and posted the second fastest lap of the race.

For the Final Eric started outside front row while Tracy and Dana started 7th and 11th. As they came into view at the end of lap one, Eric was already in the lead. Tracy picked up a position on the first lap with Dana improving 3. On lap 7 Tracy ran into trouble in turn 3 and got into the hay bales dropping back to 10th, her sister being one of the competitors that got by her. She recovered but continued to fade (for reasons we never did determine) and followed Dana back up the charts in the remaining 18 laps to finish 6th & 7th.

With 5 laps to go, Eric had a one block lead on 2nd place (driver behind is a lapped kart).

Eric, meanwhile, controlled the race building a one block lead by lap 20. In the final 3 laps though that lead dwindled rapidly. After setting what would again be the second fastest lap of the race, the #144j Biesse Kart suddenly lost half a second a lap and that was all Chris Hale needed and on the last lap got by Eric for the lead and the win. At the awards ceremony Race Director Terry Riggins said it looked like Eric got a little nervous in the final laps but it was found later that the big bump in the downhill sweeper had broken the rear bumper in half and the resulting additional flex made the kart wicked loose. This was much more likely a factor than Eric's nerves.

Second place was still a nice payday for Eric and we had the Anderson Mayor's Cup to add to our karting adventures. Loaded up, we headed out of Anderson towards and overnight stop at home and then onto Circleville Raceway Park for the Mid State Ohio Kart Club race on Sunday.

Dana had other commitments on Sunday but Eric and Tracy entered and both knew it would be the first time they would be racing against each other on their home track in front of their hometown crowd. But our single entry in this race was merely a test session as we continue to work with KartWorks and J3 Competition to develop the new Vortex Rok TT engine. We ran on old MG yellows left over from last year's Great Lakes SKUSA series and knew we would be DQ'd at the end of the day.

On-board with Tracy in the 2nd Heat was an all Stukey show.

The track was loose right from the first rounds of practice but we through the track might get stickier as the day wore on but in the first heat Tracy started fifth and had trouble getting around Jim Martin. Once around Martin she was generally faster than Chris Carman and his Biland (we still like that engine) and Jason Stukey with his Sonik. Eric started on the pole, was hooked up and was least five to eight tenths faster than everyone else cruising to another Vortex Rok TT win.

In heat 2 we tightened up her kart a little, again thinking the track would get better but it didn't. Still it was an entertaining race with Tracy on pole, Jason next to her and Eric taking his turn at staring DFL. Jason had greater momentum coming out of turn 10 at the start and stuck by Tracy's side though One and Two and took advantage of the inside line going into Three. For the next four laps Tracy and Jason almost matched each other's times with MyLaps showing the diffs between them as -.380 (Tracy faster), +.118 (Jason faster), -.005 (Tracy faster), +.025 (Jason faster). Meanwhile, Eric had picked his way past Jim and Chris and was watching all this from third place. With two turns to go, Eric shot down the inside going into turn Nine just a fraction of a second before Tracy started to move over to block. Jason won, Eric came second with Tracy rounding out the top three.

Eric inches ahead of Jason Stukey coming out of Turn One on lap 1 of the final.

As if that wasn't exciting enough, we had a video camera on Tracy's helmet and got her view of everything - including the confrontation with Eric at the scalehouse! Click here to check that video out on YouTube.

Thinking we might have been able to get around Jason and stay ahead of Eric had we dialed out the oversteer on her kart, we took drastic measures and made a big change for the feature. Jason would start on pole, Eric second, Tracy third, Chris fourth and Jim fifth. At the drop of the green flag Eric moved around Jason and was leading by turn Two. By turn Seven though we knew we went too far with the change to the 99j kart and Tracy was now fighting understeer. Jason stayed right with Eric until turn five where #144j gained a ton. After that Jason lost ground on Eric and Tracy gradually lost ground on Jason.

Jason helped her out though when on lap 6 he hit those bumps on the exit of Nine a little weird and looped a 180. Tracy and Chris got by before Jason could get going the right direction again. By the end of the race Eric had about a 5 second lead over Tracy. Jason was able to get back around Chris to finish third but we declined tech moving Jason up. Most importantly we didn't have a reed failure all day so it was a valuable outing. Helped our confidence too to be up there fighting among the leaders. We also learned a lot about our on-board recording which we hope to make available as a service to be offered by our Trackside Services venture.

© Copyright 2007 Conlin SpeedSports. All rights reserved.
Server space for this website graciously provided by Infonetics, Inc.