July 2nd, Toledo Speedway-USAC
More details at the Toledo Speedway website!!
Results
Toledo Speedway, Toledo, OH (1/2 mile paved)
Qualified: 20th (15.917 sec)
Heat: Started-7th, Finished-7th
Feature: Started-19th, Finished-17th
Well, we started our holiday week-end with the USAC National Sprint car series at Toledo Speedway.
This was the first time we ran a sprint-car without a wing, and it was quite the learning experience.
Throughout the day the car really had a push in the middle of the turns, but then would get loose as
down the straight-away. We kept trying to tune the car to make it better, but really couldn't get the
push out of it. The feature race was 50 laps though, so we made some big changes to make it better.
For the first 10 or 15 laps, the car was much better, and I was able to stay with them. The car really
started to be tight in the turns though. About lap 22 or so, the leaders had caught up to put a lap
on us. The flagman motioned to stay at the bottom of the track, so I did. There was a caution at
about lap 25. On the restart, I again went back to the bottom to make sure the faster cars could get
by. At about lap 30, the leaders had caught back up again. Coming out of the 2nd turn, the leader
decided to go UNDER me. As he came back up the track, he ended up hitting my left-front wheel which
forced me up the track. Unfortunately, the 2nd place car of Damion Gardner was where he was supposed
to be, passing me on the outside. Gardner ended up going over my right-rear and flipping his car down
the back-stretch. Gardner was physically ok. As his car went over our car, it ended up breaking the
right-rear shock, so we were done for the night. I have to thank Mark Pridemore, Ryan Schimmoeller,
Rylee Stoner, and Chad Fifer for coming out and helping us out. Without their help, I think it would
have been an even longer night. Also, thanks to everyone that came out to watch. Too bad we couldn't
have been a little faster, but I think we figured out one of the issues. Before going to the track, I
asked a couple different sources for a spring set-up to get us close. They suggested about the same
thing, so we went with it. Problem is, our car is different from theirs. We broke chassis set-up
rule #8, never copy a faster team's set-up. Afte looking at everything on Saturday, if we would have
went with what we knew, we probaly would have been a lot closer. Either way, it was a great learning
experience. For the rest of the year though, we'll be racing with the wings!
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