September 14th, Jackson Regular Show
Results
This week-end we made our first trip up to Jackson Speedway. Let me tell you, it is definitely a top notch karting facility. There are actually 3 tracks: a road course, dirt oval, and a 1/5 mile concrete oval. It was our first time on concrete, but it was really fast. There were some people we knew there, like Seth and the Huffman Bunch out of Archbold. Having run Barberton last week, we decided not too take the weight off this week-end and just ran the Heavy class. Seth signed-up for both the Lights and the Heavies. Anyway, we had 6 in our class. Throughout practice, I got more used to the track, as we tried to fine-tune for problem areas. In the first heat we started 4th. On the start the kart behind, we'll call him 42, jammed his kart under me as we went into the fist turn. We call this, "He bonzaied me." This made it 3-wide, so I jerked the kart a little up the track to avoid contact on the bottom, but then had to get out of it to avoid the contact on the top. I believe we came out of the 2nd turn in 5th, with Seth in 3rd, and 42 in 2nd. The next lap 42 and Seth disposed of the leader in the 1st and 2nd turn while I moved into 4th there, and then 3rd when we came out of turn 4. Now, I was ready to run the other two down. Seth was right on the bumper of 42, and he gave him a little tap down the back-stretch to let 42 know he was there. Seth did this a couple times, and I guess the other guy didn't really like this. 42 started turning around in his seat and pointing. Then, he began driving back and forth down the straights cutting Seth off when Seth had runs. Meanwhile, I was content to sit in 3rd. The kart was a little tight, but it was still fast. Anyway, things up front just kept getting worse and more erratic. Finally, the race ended and on the cool down, Seth gave 42 a pretty good bump in rump. He ended up breaking his nose, on the kart that is. 42 was really mad now, and when we came to the scales he jumped out of the kart and went after Seth. Luckily, there were plenty of people there to stop him. The tempers were definitely hot though. Seth decided to withdrawal from the class though before something even worse happened later. I believe Seth was in the right though because 42 was driving like an idiot. So anyway, Seth just ran the lights the rest of the night. For the 2nd heat, we were only down to 4 karts because Seth withdrew and another kart broke a motor I guess. We started 3rd this time which is were we ended up. This heat wasn't near as exciting though. 42 got an early lead while the 58 kart and I tried to run him down. We couldn't quite do it though. So, for the feature we started 2nd, outside of 42. I didn't like the start too much because I was about a kart length behind before we came out of the 4th turn for the green. So, I went into 1 in 3rd, but was able to get into 2nd by the end of the 1st lap. 42 led, and we were about 4 to 5 kart lengths behind. Again, in the feature, 42 started to turn around on the backstrecth to see were I was at. All I know, is I would have been laughing so hard if he missed the turn into 3 and went off the track. Unfortunately, he never did that though. The kart was handling pretty well, except the steering felt extremely tight. Depending on the lap, I was able to gain some on him, but then maybe I lost some on the next lap. Needless to say, he ended up winning it by about 4 or 5 kart lengths as we came home in 2nd. Well, I thought we did pretty well on our first trip to Jackson. We got some money for our troubles, and we believe we know what the problem was and will be able to fix it if we go there again. The only bad thing was the travel time. We ended up leaving the track at about 11pm and getting home at about 1:30am due to some traffic on 94.
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