I really don’t want to tell you about qualifying but I guess that’s where the whole thing started. I somehow got some garbage in one of my gas cans and poured it into my car just before qualifying. On the first lap I made it to turn 3 but when I went to get back to the gas the motor just stumbled. It all but quit as I made it back to the flag stand and then I just dropped to the apron and didn’t even take my second lap. Turned out I still wasn’t the slowest car and qualified 27th out of 30 cars.
We went through the fuel line from the carb to the tank and when we took off the gas filter it was full of brown fuel that was supposed to be blue. I pressure washed the car back at the shop and I was sure that I didn’t spray the gas tank directly but we figured that was where the dirt came from. Then, since the parts guy didn’t have a replacement filter for us we decided to wash the old one out with gas. When we poured the gas out of the can into a bowl we found where the brown gas had come from.
I grabbed another can of gas and it was blue as should be so it was just that one can that was contaminated. We washed out the filter and then the track let me take a few laps to see if we had solved the problem. The car ran good and felt good but we figured we would probably clog the filter again after a few laps. Still, it was worth a try to get some seat time so we went out to run the race.
I lined up where I was supposed too and was real cautious on the start. I figured if I had a good car I had 100 laps to make up some time so there was no reason to push it. Sure enough, on the first lap they went 3 wide into turn 3 just ahead of me and wrecked about 5 cars. On the next lap they did a little better and made it a lap and a half before someone did the same thing again. Both times I found an opening and got through it without putting a scratch on the car.
After that things were pretty tame. We had 3 or 4 more cautions but mostly for individual spins. Anyone who got up out of the groove in turn 3 had trouble because that was where all the early accidents were and it was covered in oil dry.
My car felt really good until about lap 15 and then it started to get tighter with every lap. One of the things that a long race gives you is the opportunity to move around on the track and see if changing your line will help you a little. I was doing pretty well considering how tight my car was. I would change my line a little here and there but nothing seemed to help it much. To be honest it wasn’t very fun to drive at all.
Then, just after lap 70, I started to come up on some lap cars. I was 2 laps down to the leader and had just been passed by a car that I think was 6th or 7th when I came up on a car that was down low in turns 1 and 2. I moved up a lane and a half to go around him and my car just seemed to love it. I got a run off turn 2 that actually surprised me so I tried to do it again in turn 3 and 4. The first time it worked real good and it worked again in turn 1 and 2 as well. All of a sudden I was all over the 6th place car that had passed me a few laps ago when I was trying to run the low line. I ran into turn 3 on his outside and thought I would just blow by him but I got just a little too high and lost the nose of the car. I got hard into the brakes and almost made it through but I over corrected and whacked the wall coming out of turn 4. That was the end of my night.
I guess I could have kept going but all the batteries in our radios were dead so no one could tell me how bad the car was. Once I got to the pits and got out of my car the race was over before I could pull the fender back out.
Everyone tells me that the experience I am getting driving a car that handles so bad will pay off in the long run. I'm sure it does but I hope I never really need to use those skills that much. As bad as it sounds my car IS getting better every week and one of these days I’m going to have a real good car that will run up front. I’m not giving up that’s for sure.
One last thing, I want to tell you all about one of my sponsors who helped me out a bunch and sponsored this race for me. I have to thank Marty and Chris Schuster at Miller-Leaman, Inc. for giving me the money to get the transmission fixed and to buy the tires for this race. Man, that really helped out a lot. There is no way we could do this with out Marty and Chris as well as the support we get from Culligan, AutoTrader.com, Dunn Insurance, and Universal Pest Control. These companies do this, not because it makes good business sense, but because they have hearts as big as Texas. Thank you guys for making a kid’s dream come true.
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