Heat race win with a fast car, then a wreck on lap 1 of the
feature. Likely my final oval track pure racing event. A bit sad for
sure.
Thank you again to Kim, Jonny, and Amy for the help at the
track. Thanx also to the Hutchins’ team for all of the help loading up our
car. It will need the front horns replaced it appears.
Preps for this event were again a challenge. All crew members were tied up with other things, and tech from may 15th had our engine torn all apart. Once I got everything back together, not enough time remained to paint the car, so I worked to finish up some of the other wished for chassis tweaks.
We showed up on race day to find out we were drawing for our
heat race starting position. How we would start the feature had yet to be
determined. This plain old sucks. Believe it or not, some of us just may
set up a car based on where we will start a race. Going fast out front, and
passing 17 cars requires entirely different plans. I happened to draw #11. Which would have had me starting
4th in my heat race. Turns out that the planned 2nd place
starter, chose to go to the back of the field. I then moved up to
2nd for the start. I then won my heat race fairly
easily.
THEN>>>>>>>
The decision was made to invert the field. A few chose to
start behind the rest of us. I would start 18th. Points leader
happened to spin out in his heat, so he finished poorly in his heat, and ta da,
he starts the main event near the front. See anything wrong yet?
The rest is just racing history, as likely is my oval track
driving career. I lasted 1 lap before the mixture of slow cars up front, fast
cars out back, and guys with little racing experience mixed poorly through the
field resulted in a huge pile up. While stuck outside, I tried to squeeze by, I
got drilled by a car coming straight up the track. Hit me hard enough I did a
273 deg spin and planted the left front into the outside wall.
My days of spending 100 hours or more to prep for a night of
demo derby style racing are done.
I will ponder things for a bit. Decide if I want to research
road course racing, antique car racing clubs, move to another division, or even
build a hot rod. Once I know a direction, I will sell the stuff I do not need.
$13K would likely take my sportsman car just as it came off the track. The
engine could not be built from scratch for that. I have spent 1000’s of hours
making the car what it is / was. There is no other machine just like
it.
Until then, I have life to enjoy. I have my spotter duties
with the Tinio team, and I can rub elbows with Muffy as an apprentice Spotter
whore possibly.
A bit of time away from wreck repairs, will do my brain some
good.
It was a fun ride, for a long time.
Cheers,
Larry
