It is sure interesting how things can change in a few weeks. After the last race I was all about running the big races at the big tracks and now this week... not so much.

USA International Speedway in Lakeland is by far the biggest race track I have every raced on. I was excited about racing here but it sort of turned out like putting my 4X4 pick up truck next to one of those dump trucks they use at a rock quarry. What seems big in your own environment suddenly looks pretty small. I like to joke about "My Crew" by talking about my car chief and my crew chief and my spotter, tire carrier, jack man, gas man, etc., etc., etc., which all consists of just me and my dad. When you get to a track like this you need all those people and more... (more)

It was a good thing that they had a special practice on Friday night because I needed the time to try to adjust to the size of this track. I was supposed to go out and run a few laps slowly before I started running all out but on a track this big you feel like you are going slow even when you ARE running all out! On my second lap I was running lap times in the 22:50's. I almost had to hold my hand on my knee to keep my foot on the gas because the straightaways were so long it seemed like I should be lifting even though I was only half way to the corner.

We had been told what gear to run and that the track would be tight so we set the car up a lot looser that we normally run it. Turned out the gear they gave me was way too low and when they said tight they meant really tight. We weren't too bad while the sun was up because the track was pretty slick but when the sun finally went down the car became a hand full to drive.

On top of that the set of tires we had were way off from what they were marked. Both of the right side tires were supposed to be the same size but they mounted up over 2 inches different and no mater what I did I either had 3 1/2 inches of stagger or a 1/2 inch. The car was just crap so we decided to get a tire from another older set that matched the other ones better and loosened up the chassis a little bit more but, when I got to pit road to see if this helped, they told me that practice was over for our class and I had to put the car away for the night.

The next morning we got to the track and breezed through tech and was ready for when practice started. I was hoping that there would be a little bit more rubber down and the track wouldn't be so slick but I didn't get my wish. I was now running laps over 23 seconds and everyone was faster than me. I figured it was just me not knowing the track but no mater what line I ran or how I drove the car, if I made it better on entry it just got worse on exit.

After a couple rounds of practice it was time to get ready to qualify and put on the qualifying tires. This was an impound race where you buy your tires and have them mounted and then they put them in a trailer so that you can't put any chemicals on them to make them faster before the race. About an hour before you go out to qualify you bring your car around to where they store the tires and put them on your car. Then, you go across the scales and out on to the track for a brief scuff session after which they line you up to qualify. Even though they mark the tires, you are not allowed to go back to your pits so you have to reset your tire pressures and make your changes out on pit road. It's a long story but this procedure is the worst I have ever seen and the officials were just as nasty as they could be about it. It they would have let us stop on pit road in front of where our trailer was parked we could have made the adjustments in about 3 minutes and then driven down to the position that our car needed to be in when qualifying began. Instead my mom and dad had to carry all the tools and jack and a 50 lb tank of nitrogen half way down the front stretch to where the car was. Then they started yelling at us because we were taking too long and holding up the line. Still, we got the adjustments done and got lined up with out anybody having to wait on us even though it almost cost me what little crew I have.

In qualifying the car was the best it had been all weekend. This set of tires was real good and I could get into the gas hard off the corners but I think I should have tried to drive it deeper into the corner than I did. It probably could have been a little bit looser too because it felt real stable all around the track. My best lap time was exactly 1 second off the pole time and I qualified 19th out of 24 cars.

Qualifying was at 4 pm in the heat of the day with the sun shinning directly on the track. The race didn't begin until after the sun set and the Super Late Models ran a 125 lap race. We knew from practice the night before that the track would tighten up a lot so we changed a couple things to try to compensate for that but we weren't sure if we did enough or too much. When the race started I thought the car was pretty good but I had a hard time getting off the corners without the rear-end wanting to come around on me. Usually I can make up the time I loose getting off the corner by driving it in a little deeper on the next turn. This time they were catching me coming off AND going into the corners. I felt like a sitting duck.

We ran the first 20 some laps without a caution and the harder I tried the worse the car got. I thought the car was loose because it was slipping all around underneath me. At 40 laps another caution came out for a car that had blown up and covered the track in smoke. I told my spotter that the car was loose so he suggested that, since I was almost in last place, I should just drop down on pit road and see if I could get one of the crew members from another team to jack my car up and pull out a spring rubber we had put in to loosen the car. I ran down the pit road and stopped in front of a bunch of guys just standing there and started yelling out of the window at them. One of them came over and heard me and he grabbed a jack and had the spring rubber out in about 10 seconds and I was on my way.

When the race got going again I realized that I actually had a tight race car and now I had a really tight race car. What I wasn't able to feel was the car being tight on entry to the corner and that I was breaking the car loose to get it to turn. With that spring rubber out that didn't even work any more and I was really a sitting duck! I think I made it about 5 more laps when smoke and sparks started coming up into the car. I almost spun out coming off turn 2 and I realized that something was now very wrong with the car so I dropped down to the apron and pulled into the pits. At that time there was only one other car out of the race so I was credited with a 23rd place finish.

Back at the trailer I pulled the hood off and looked around but I really couldn't see anything wrong. Then I walked to the back of the car and the left rear tire was sticking out the side about 2 inches when it usually is inside the fender about that much. I got a flash light and looked a little closer and found that the cap on the power steering reservoir was missing. That explained where the smoke was coming from because it was probably splashing a little fluid up on the headers but I couldn't see why the rear end had moved over so much. We loaded everything up and the next morning when I got back to the shop I unloaded the car and got it up on jack stands. When I took off the left rear tire I found that the bracket that holds the panhard bar to the axle had broken in half.

We have spent the last few years upgrading many things on the car but I think some of things that were fine before are now starting to get worn out. Especially when you consider that I probably put more miles and laps on the car at much faster speeds this weekend than I did running all of last year. All in all, I'm not sure exactly what I learned about racing or how I'll use it in the future but I can tell you I'm not going back to Lakeland until I get a few more crew members and a 4 wheeler!