July 13th, OSPDS Race #4-BeaveRun
Results
Briggs Lite:
Well, we did some figuring back at the hotel Saturday night, and we decided to make some more changes besides the gear. We tried them in practice, and they worked ok, but we still had to fine tune them a little. The major problem with this kart was I began to drive it like the Animal. I was using TOO much brake going into the 3rd turn. I wasn't carrying as much speed as the Animal, and the flathead motor needs the momentum much more though because it doesn't have the low-end torque the Animal has. I just got in the habit from driving the Animal though. Anyway, the track had tightened up a little since the day before. We ended up qualifying 3rd again, but Jeremy was on the pole this time, with Jason on the outside. Jeremy brought us down to the flag extremely slow, but he was able to jump out to the early led. For the first couple laps, Jason and I were racing hard before his tires warmed up, and was able to get a kart length on me. Then, I started to hear something from the motor. It sounded familiar. The pitch of the exhaust became very raspy sounding, and I immediately thought, the exhaust pipe is coming loose. Sure enough, that's what was happening. I thought about pulling in right away, but I was still runnin' pretty fast coming up to pit entrance. I ended up making another lap as the pipe became more loose. We ended up completing 7 or 8 laps and finished 3rd.
Animal:
We made some slight changes to the Animal Sunday as well, and they seemed to help as we again posted the fastest practice time of the day. It was 3 tenths faster than Saturday's, so we felt we were going in the right direction. Again, we qualified on the pole with a time about a tenth faster than Jeff's. Again in the feature, he got a better start. His kart didn't drift down this time though, and I fell in right behind him. I decided to race the track more this time though, and was able to get right on him bumper out of 3 again. I followed him for another lap though before making the pass coming out of 3. I settled into a routine then as the laps ticked off. However, I was able to pull out quite far enough as Jeff started to mimic the line I was running helping him drop is lap times. With about 3 laps to go, I made a little bobble coming off of the 3rd turn. I thought this would help him to close-up, so I tried to keep the kart as low as I could in the 1st turn. Well, coming out of the turn, there's a pretty good bump, and as I hit that with the wheel a little turned, the kart got loose. Loose enough for him to really close in. He must have had a great 3rd turn because he was able to pull up beside me on the front-stretch. I made a little higher entry into 1, so I could come off under him. This worked to perfection except I had to keep it pinched down in order not to hit him coming off. Again, the kart got a little loose, and he was able to pull away a little. I was able to close it back up then, as we came down for the white flag. Unfortunately, I couldn't get back by him though, and we came home in 2nd.
Well, that was pretty much the whole week-end. I was very happy with how things ended up. We showed that the Animal was the fastest thing there all week-end. We don't have the results to back it up, but we DO have the time sheets to prove it. The flat-head just required more tweaking that we really couldn't do with only two of us there. So again, if anyone really wants to help us out sometime, LET ME KNOW! Our next race with be this Saturday, July 19th at the Toledo Speedway for the 4th race of the Northern Ohio Burris Speedway Series. We will have both kart there, however, I think only the flat-head will be racing for points. The pits will open at 1:30, practice will be at 2:30, and racing will start around 4pm.
Back to 2003 Reports