The typical race weekend is like my golf game, 1 good shot can excite me to play again
June 12th, 2024 - This weekend was a little different in that it was a Saturday/Sunday show, but in so many ways it was so very typical. Saturday night we went to race at 35 Raceway Park, a very cool little track with character. When I asked Alex what his "goal" was for this race, he wasn't sure. I suggested maybe to start with "surviving"? The night was good, continued to learn every lap what worked and what didn't. In the feature I thought something was majorly wrong with his steering as it was flying back and forth while under caution, I was quite concerned. Then somebody lost their exhaust header and I hoped for all the world it wasn't ours (foreshadowing), and thankfully it wasn't and we didn't hit it under caution (others weren't so lucky). Then the front wing started to look really wonky, and it was the first time I tried to get Alex's attention from trackside to pull it in. Later he recounted that while it was wonky it seemed secure to being the racing driver he said #sendit. Send it he did, and the front wing came completely loose from it's front mounts and flipped up on him. He decided that maybe it was time to pull it to the infield. He was frustrated because he never got to the point of feeling like he "understood" the right way to race the track. To me, that's what makes a track special, if it can't immediately be figured out the best way around instantly. We'll be back, and we'll keep trying new things. (Oh, and the wheel thing? Alex thinks it's a bit of a nervous tick under caution, he thinks he was doing it but didn't realize it was visible out of the car.)
Sunday we headed north to Waynesfield Raceway Park to run a show with the FAST on Dirt 410 series and the Midwest Thunder Midgets. This track was wholly different from the night before, little bit longer and much higher banks, and with the other classes running who knows what the surface will be like come feature time. Qualifying came and went, it's tough because it's the first and only time touching the track before racing and the question is do you go out to collect data on the track or put down the fastest time you can to give yourself the best track position. At this point it's fair to say Alex likes it when the low line can be effective, which he saw some Midgets making it work so he wanted to see what that was like, and ran one corner high. He came in and said the high line was so incredibly easy to drive here and the bottom was so rough. Heat race went well, he was finding some places to run on the track, but as we were prepping for the feature we asked our pit neighbor a question about tire spacing, and his response was why does tire spacing matter if you don't have an exhaust? ....What? Turns out we lost the exhaust header at some point late in the heat race and never noticed, so back to the track I went to see if anybody turned an exhaust into the lost and found. Thankfully it was in one of the push trucks, and we went back to get it installed. We found that all the spare header bolts I bought have mysteriously disappeared, and (shock surprise) we run header bolts a different size to everybody else (nothing on this car is normal, I swear). At this point even the relatively emotionally-even Alex was starting to wear thin, you could just see he was starting to question whether we were even supposed to be here. But we've done this long enough to know that the only way is through, and there will be good days with the bad. Turns out we were able to make some bolts we had on hand work, scared up a gasket, and lined up for the feature. We had a reasonable starting spot in the feature inside row 5, but had some speedy cars lined up behind us. Lo and behold, we were competitive. Lap after lap, corner after corner Alex was finding places to run, and he'd get a run or two on some very stout competitors. In the end, he went P9 to P9, so on paper not very memorable, but he ran in the middle of the beehive, held his own, and showed himself he has an opportunity to make good things happen. In racing, it's amazing how things feel like their piling up against you for a whole weekend, but put in some really good laps and feel like you're making progress makes all those feelings melt away. Bring on next week! Saturday we're at @Florence Speedway for redemption, this is the track we didn't get the car to because the trailer decided to eject a bearing halfway down and we didn't have the parts on hand to fix it.
As we mentioned earlier this week, big thanks to all the tracks and series officials who give us a place to play and people to do it with within a ruleset designed to make it even possible for a little race team like ours to be competitive. Also big thanks to photographers like @Nate's Racin Photos for capturing some awesome images and also our growing #WingClub!