July 4th, Tri-City Motor Speedway
Results
Qualified: 13th
Heat (8 laps): Started-1st, Finished-7th
Feature (35 laps): Started-12th, Finished-10th
Sunday, we travelled about an hour south of Whittemore to Auburn, MI. The day didn't start off too well
though with rain showers in the area. The weather delayed the start of things about an hour at first.
In hot laps, the car was EXTREMELY loose, and I ended up spinning twice. Although, we did make
adjustments that helped the car every time out. Our qualifying lap went pretty well, but we discovered
we were a little off on the gear. For the heat, we started in the position we qualified which ended up
being on the pole. The series starts the slower guys in the front for the heats, so we were on the
pole. I think we did pretty well on the start. The car handled a lot better than practice, but we
still had some work to do and ended up in 7th. The feature was then delayed about and 1 1/2 because
it started to rain just as we were pushing out. We finally started around 7pm. By this point, I think
everyone just wanted to get the race over with. The changes we made to the car helped a great deal,
and I was able to get up to 8th from our 12th place starting position. Even though the car was pushing
a little on entry, I could get off the corners really well. With about 8 to go, there was a caution
though and they found some oil on the track. They put down oil-dry and had us run though it to make
sure everything was cleaned up. After the second time of doing though, I picked up a really bad
vibration. I acted like the motor had dropped a cylinder, so I thought a nozzle was cloggeed. I
tried to clean it out under the caution, but couldn't. I took the green hoping it would clean out
then, but it didn't either and I was forced to pull off with about 5 to go. We did end up coming home
in 10th though. Come to find out yesterday, the plug wire had just come off the cylinder. Well, that's
about it for this double-header week-end. We definitely learned a lot and can't wait to get the car
out next week-end.
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