March 20th, WKA Speedway Pavement National Race #1-Lowe's Motor Speedway


Results

This week-end we attended our first WKA National event in the shadows of the historic Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, NC. The track we raced on is the 1/5th mile asphalt oval located just off the back-stretch of the 1.5 mile NASCAR track. We arrived in Concord on a rather foggy Thurs. night. After picking-up our extra motor from our motor builder (Dover Power), who's a short distance from the track, we headed to the track early Friday morning to get registered and get ready for practice. The weather on Friday was great with sun all day, and hi's in the low 70's. We weren't exactly sure where to start on set-up or anything since no one was giving up any info on the internet before-hand. Having never been on or even seen the track before, it took us a few practice rounds to get in the ball-park, but by the end of the day Friday we were confident with a few changes we would pick-up a lot of speed. However, we did lose a few parts throughout the day, like a sprocket holder and some weights, which did cost us some set-up time. Before leaving the track though, we looked at all our data and made the changes we wanted for Saturday's first practice. Saturday we arrived back at the track bright and early because I had to be at the 7:30am driver's meeting. Before the driver's meeting though we found out it just wasn't gonna be our day. The morning temperature was around 39 degrees, and I guess we didn't let enough air out of tires before leaving Friday night. The big temperature change caused the right rear tire to grow about 1/2", changing our stagger drastically. No big deal though, we would just put a different tire on the rim. Well, in the process of doing that, we broke our paper towel holder. Then, the lenses fell out off dad's glasses. No big deal though right? The first practice didn't go so well though. We made about 5 laps and the motor started to feel a little sour. I pulled off before really diagnosing the probelm though. For the second round of practice, we put on some new tires to scuff them in for qualifying. The tires were just breaking in when the motor started to die at end of the stretches, basically choking itself out. After about 3 laps, I pulled it off again while alcohol was just pouring out of the bowl. It appeared that the float was stuck. So, not knowing how involved a carb change would be, we decided to switch motors since we did have a fresh one. We put oil in it and warmed it up for qualifying. We got one lap warm-up for qualifying with two timed laps. I took the green for the first timed lapped, ready to put in a solid time. As I came of the 4th turn, the motor started to loose power. I finished the lap, but the motor kept loosing power, and by the 2nd turn it blew up! There was about a fist-sized hole in the front of the block and the bottom of the rod was completely gone. So needless to say, we didn't qualify very well. No matter what though, we had to start 10th because we switched motors back to first one, but this time swapped the carbs. We made a couple more changes to the kart, and just let it sit. In the meantime, we broke a spray-bottle handle. Anyway, with the abundance of classes and karts at the National races we ended up waiting quite awhile until our race. Our class took the track around 7pm, and we got to race under the lights. I tried my best to get a little jump on the start, but only succeeded in staying with everyone. The field made it through 1 and 2 clean. I moved to the outside of the 9th place starter, Rebecca Head, going into 3 to make a pass. As I passed, she spun on the low side bringing out the caution. WKA displayed the signs, "Original line-up, single-file." So, we were regulated to the tail again. On the restart, I tried to get pass we I did before. I wasn't able to though, and battled hard for the next 18 laps trying to get by. At one point, I did get by but was shown the "move over flag" since the leader was coming. I gave the leader room, but she also took advantage and passed me back. Throughout the race though our kart was much faster, but she was running the line I wanted to be in from the center of the corner off. I don't know how I didn't hit her some of the times. Finally, coming out of 4, I had enough of a run, and was able to pull on outside of her and make the pass down the front-stretch. Some other karts had dropped out during the race, so we ended up finishing in the 6th position. We were very happy with that considering everything that had happened throughout the day. The kart made it to the end, and we actually got to race for 20 laps! I'd also like to congratulate Seth for coming home with a podium finish in 5th.
So right now, we're sitting 6th in the National points standings. The next National race will be the May 1st and 2nd at BeaveRun in PA, and that will probably be the next time we'll be on the track. We had a very good run last year there in the divisionals, but we'll have to see how things go this year.
Pic from Nationals!!
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