The only real way that you can measure success at the track is by where you finish. While I could tell you a lot of good things that happened, bottom line is this just wasn't my night.

I guess you could say the same thing about my race car. Although it feels a lot better, the lap times I'm running haven't changed. I've just got to find out how to get through the corners better... (more)

In the race 2 weeks ago I thought I had a fast car. I could drive it in hard and get back to the gas a lot sooner than before. You would think that my lap times would be better but they weren't. The car was bottoming out and when that would happen it would slide up the track. We figured that if we could get the front of the car high enough my corner speed would be better. Once we got the car up where it wouldn't bottom out then it was way too high going down the straight away. We changed the front shocks and adjusted more rebound in them and that helped keep it down all the way around the track.

Next was qualifying. I don't really understand how the shocks work exactly but I had not been driving the car in as hard as I could because every time I did the car would bottom out so they adjusted the shocks for the way I had been driving. But, since it was qualifying, I was trying to get everything out of the car I could so on the first lap I drove it in deeper than ever and the nose of the car just slid. On the second lap I over compensated and drove it in too easy. When the qualifying sheet came out I was 16th out of 20 cars.

Now during practice I kept telling my crew that there was something wrong with the brakes. I knew what I was feeling but I didn't know what would cause it to happen. My crew was so concerned about the car bottoming out that they sort of overlooked the brake problem I was trying to tell them about. Right before qualifying we tried to set the brake bias thinking that I had too much rear brake but I actually had the bias more towards the front. Then, we noticed that the right front caliper was leaking slightly. We messed around with that a bit and then decided that it only leaked when I was pumping the brakes up real hard so we let it go. The problem I was experiencing was in the right rear. We took the wheel off and looked everything back there over real close but nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. Finally, it was time to race, so I headed out to the driver introductions and hoped for the best.

Starting 16th puts you on the outside row. The car ahead of me dropped to the rear so I actually started 14th, still on the outside. When we took the green I usually try to get down as quickly as possible and I wait for my spotter to tell me when I'm clear. I had a different spotter this week and he didn't talk much so I sort of hesitated going into turn one waiting for him to say something. Once I realized that we were still all side by side I decided to just run as fast as I could in the outside groove and try to make up a few position on the outside. That worked really well and I think I passed 2 cars before the bottom opened up and then I dropped down to the low groove and settled in there.

After 2 more laps I gave the outside to a faster car coming up behind me and lost a position and then 2 laps later the same thing happened with another car. On the next lap I came up behind a slow car and tried to do a cross over behind him to set him up and pass underneath him coming off the corner. The problem was that he just held the car down on the bottom and so I didn't have room to complete the pass like that. I had to get into the brakes so I wouldn't run into the back of him and that bunched up several cars behind me. I kept trying to set him up for an inside pass but he held it down and after running behind him for 3 or 4 laps I got a big run on him going into turn 3 and almost hit him again. I had to get really hard in the brakes and that caused me to bottom out again which caused the car to slide up out of the groove. The next thing I knew 2 cars were going past me on the inside.

On Sunday morning I was watching the video of the race and we were talking about keeping the momentum up and letting the car roll through the corners. Then it dawned on me. Fast cars are fast because the get through the corners faster so slow cars are slow because they can't. I was watching the first few laps while I was running on the outside and then I realized that I had the perfect opportunity to pass that slow car, and probably could have easily, by going to the outside. If I'd have tried that with the old set up I would have been in the wall but this soft setup turns so much better in the center of the corner that I think I could do it now.

Anyway, we ran 5 or 6 more laps and then I got back one of the position I lost. After 5 or 6 more laps I was up to the back of the next car. A trick I learned last year is to try to get the nose of your car up along side the car you are trying to pass going down the straight away and then back out a little just before the corner so you don't hit him as you turn in. Sometimes they think you are further up than you really are and they give you the inside line. I was where I wanted to be but, before I could back off, he chopped down on me going into the corner. I got into his bumper and turned him around and that brought out the first caution.

The race director called the incident my fault and sent us both to the rear. On the restart I guess the car I turned thought he should have been in front of me and he jumped the start by going around me on the outside. As we came off turn 4 a wreck happened a few cars in front of me. I couldn't go high because I had a car on my outside and couldn't slow down fast enough so I ran into the back of the car in front of me pretty hard. I had no idea how bad the damage was to my car but my hood was sticking up about a foot and a half on the right side. I tried to convince myself and my dad that I could drive it like that. He kept suggesting maybe I should come down pit road and have someone check it but I didn't want to come in. Then, while I was driving around under yellow, I went to slow down and I didn't have any brakes anymore. That's all dad needed to hear and I got told to park the car. I'm getting really tired of wrecking or breaking down and not being able to finish these races. I wanted to stay out so bad and I even tried to convince myself that I didn't need brakes! But, I knew dad was right, and I reluctantly pulled the car in and parked it as I was told. It turned out, brakes or no brakes, it was a good thing I came in. The front bumper and air box was completely collapsed and the radiator was blocked so I would have overheated the motor pretty quickly.

Next week I'm going to try something different. A friend of mine used to race a Sportsman race car several years ago. He had it parked in his warehouse and I have been trying to get him to let me race it. Finally, a few months ago, he told me to come and pick it up. So I have been working on it trying to get it ready and next week I am going to race it for the first time. This car you have to let roll through the corners as fast as possible so I think learning how to do that will really help me when I get back into the late model next month.