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     Spring 2007   5/2007   6/2007   7/2007     8/2007    9/2006 

Weekly Performance    

I was fortunate enough to work for a company that volunteered it's services for the Extreme Makeover Home edition that came to the Capital District.  Here's a link to some pics...

9/15/07

And so it ends...  Kale ran the car last week while I was in Denver, and did a great job.  He finished the feature among the big dogs and Kevin decided to try to run the Race of Kings the following nite.  Unfortunately the flywheel bolts sheared and put an early end to the evening.  We pulled the motor and replaced the bolts, and took a look inside the pan just to make sure there weren't any issues with the bearings.  

We got to the track after a rainy morning.  The track was treacherous in warmups, but quickly dried out to a very slippery surface.  We had time trials and I managed a mediocre 10th fastest.  They inverted the top 6 for the feature and that left me 10th.  I got a pretty good start and grabbed a couple of spots to move up to 8th.  A few more laps in and I was able to slip by the 63 for 7th.  And there I sat following the 22 around lap after lap.  With about 5 laps to go the 22  slipped up into the turn 2 wall and I ducked underneath to grab 6th.  Not a bad result for an extremely slick track. 

9/1/07

Once again we got off to a poor start.  Made 1/2 a lap before I had to pull in from warmups with a mud filled right rear wheel.  We left the car alone for the heat, were I was starting 6th.  On the original start something happened that I didn't see and the caution came out right away.  The guys in front of me didn't seem to get the message though and started running into each other.  I was 4th on the restart and the 77 blew it in hard on the bottom and slid up into my front end.  I got straightened out and finally made it up to 5th for the finish.  The car was still not very good so me made some big changes for hot laps.  It was a little better, so we made some more changes and rolled off 13th in the feature.  We didn't get one lap in before there was a pretty big pile up on the outside of 3 and 4.  Fortunately we were on the bottom and missed it all.  I restarted 10th and ran a couple of laps before the next caution flew.  This time I restarted 6th and got a good run on the outside of 1 and 2 and by the end of the lap I was in 3rd.  The car was pretty good on top and I thought we might have a chance to chase down the top 2 when the car started skipping at the end of the front stretch and picked up a bad vibration coming off of 2.  So I shut it down and coasted to the pits.

8/25/07

We came to the track with a little different setup this week to see if we might be able to stumble on something.  We definitely stumbled.  The car was still too tight, so we freed it up a bit and got set to start from the inside front row of the heat.  Shows you how good we've been going lately.  The 83 Jumped the start and I played catch up going into turn 1.  While I was doing that the 25 took to the high side and got by us both.  All 3 of us ran side by side down the back stretch and we came out of turn for in 2nd.  I followed Frankie around till the finish with a car that still wasn't right.  We made some pretty serious changes for hot laps and the car was much better.  Jimmy threw some more stuff at it and we rolled off 12th in the feature.  I was mired there for a few laps until I got the track figured out and then we started moving forward.  It was slow going but we were pretty good both on the top and bottom.  There were a few cautions sprinkled in there and I made the most of them, grabbing a spot or two each time.  By lap 12 or so I was 6th or 7th and needed a bunch of laps to reel in the guys in front of me.  By the last lap I was making a run on the outside of Frankie coming off of turn 4 when the 00 spun and I had to lock her down to miss him.  I got back going and fell into line and finished 10th.

8/18/07

So the challenges continue...  This week I got in about 1/2 a lap before the motor started skipping.  Turns out we had broken an intake rocker.  Fortunately we had a good spare in the trailer and we got things buttoned up before the heat race.  I started 7th and got in trouble right away in turn one.  The 3 slid up a lane and I went to fill the hole but she turned down on me before I could get all the way there.  I checked up hard but still got into her rear quarter and took an agricultural ride along the lower berm.  We had a restart and I was able to pick up a couple of spots and we finished 5th.  We needed to make some changes to the car, the track was already getting real slick.  Jimmy tightened us up some and we were a little bit better in hot laps.  We made a couple more changes for the feature where we were starting 14th.  One car didn't make it to the line and we got to move up a row.  We ran a few laps and it was tough sledding, there wasn't much bite out there and I wasn't very good on the top.  I was only able to grab a couple of spots, some I gave up and some I got back and in the end we ended up 10th.

8/4/07

You know, if we could quit shooting ourselves in the foot with all our brake problems we might just have an easier time with this race thing.  We had to replace the front rotors after last week's damage.  In warmups the car was pretty decent, just a little tight.  I started the heat in 6th and we didn't make it 20 yards before the knuckle heads in front of me tried to kill each other.  I ended up running in to the car in front of me hard enough to bend something in the front end.  The restart was no better, they still couldn't drive in a straight line.  I avoided contact this time, but the car was definitely not right.  I dropped into 6th and spent the rest of the race trying to pass the 83 with no luck.  We ended up 6th.  We put some new brake pads in the rear to rectify the brake issues that we were having and went out for hot laps.  The car was still not right and Jimmy figured out that the left rear bar was bad.  We slammed in a new bar, made a few other changes to tighten up the car and lined up in our 18th starting spot.  The car actually felt much better, but the guys in front of me once again were trying to wreck about every 10 seconds.  I was struggling trying to move forward, the cars were 2x2, when Artie and the 3 got together coming off of 4.  I was able to miss them, but something broke on the 68 and he was limping down the front stretch.  He and the 3 got together again and the 3 started to spin in front of me.  I moved to the inside to miss her and just caught her back bumper sending her car the rest of the way around.  On the restart I was able to start moving up a little bit by sticking on the bottom and I was just about to crack the top 10 when the yellow came out.  We got back going and the car was just wicked tight.  I lost a few spots and finished 13th.  It turns out that the right front had been going down from the start and we finished with about 4 lbs of air in it. 

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