June 26th, Kalamazoo Speedway


Results

Qualified: 18th (13:431)
Heat (8 laps): Started-8th, Finished-7th
Feature (30 laps): Started-19th, Finished-11th
Next race(s): July 3rd-Whittemore Speedway, Whittemore, MI and July 4th-Tri-City Speedway, Auburn, MI
Schedule Update: Angola race has been moved to Sept. 3rd and Ft. Wayne has been cancelled

Saturday we travelled to Kalamazoo Speedway for OUR 2nd race of the season, but the 4th race for the Wolverine Outlaw Winged Midget Series. Again, the results above are to the best of our knowledge, and the official results are posted on www.wingedmidgets.com. The track was a pretty nice place with transponder scoring and suites above the grandstands. There wasn't too much of a straight-away or a change in the 14° banking which let you just turn the wheel and go. During our one hot lap session, the car was a little loose coming off the turn. We made some adjustments, both to the car and my line, for qualifying which were both good and bad. The car adjustments were pretty well. My line adjustment wasn't the best. That's ok though because we put in two solid laps, and we have to start at the back for our first three races anyway being a rookie. For our heat race, we started 8th out of 8. The car handled pretty well, but was starting to get a little tight. On the first lap, I was able to get past the 7th place starter, and finally ran down the 6th place runner with about 2 laps to go. I was able to get up beside him, but couldn't get past him before the checkers. After our heat race, it was time to wait for our feature which was after 4 late model features consisting of 30, 35, 25, and 50 laps. I think we finally took the track around 11pm or later. On the initial start, our good friend Kent McCloskey spun coming off the 2nd turn bringing out the first yellow, and requiring a complete restart. At the drop of the green, I was able to get past a couple of cars early. The car was handling pretty well as the laps ticked off as I was try to get past the next couple cars. With about 10 laps to go, the leaders had caught up to us, and were starting to go by. The 3rd and 4th place cars were racing pretty hard when they went by us with the 4th place car running down onto the apron of the track trying to make the pass. Anyway, he definitely came up the track and I'm not sure if he hit the car two positions ahead of us or just spook him. Either way, the car on the same lap as us went toward the wall and ended up hitting it. On the restart, Kent got turned around again which ended his night. We had about 10 laps to go when the green dropped again. I was able to stay with our next competitor, but the car started to pick-up a bad push, so he was able to get away from me. Luckily, no one was able to get around us though, and we ended up coming home 11th. Well, that about does it for this week-end. We ended up pulling out of the track around 12:30am after pulling in around 1:30 that afternoon. It was a fun little track though, and I was happy to get home in one piece again with no major problems. Next week-end, we have a double-header racing at Whittemore Speedway, Saturday, July 3rd, and Tri-City Speedway July 4th.
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