Troubles

Many people who follow the sport of auto racing have some misplaced ideas about what is involved in being successful. I was one of those people five years ago. "Really, how hard could it be to turn left four times per lap?" Friday night was one of those nights that proved that it is not as easy as one would think.

Randy and I were excited to build off of our good run at Quincy earlier in the month, and we had scheduled our first run up to Donnellson, Iowa, to the Lee County Raceway.  We needed one new wheel from Griffin Performance and we would be ready to race. I got the tire on Friday morning and dropped it by Summy's to be mounted.

My New Rim...Ruined the First Night Out

We got to the track and set up for hot laps. Randy put the new wheel and tire on the right front. I was ready to go out and get a feel for the track I had run many times before. As I went hard into turn one, I hit the brake, set the car, and off we went as I mashed the gas...right into the wall. I did not know where that came from. I knew that the track was slimy, but not that slimy.

I pulled into the pits to discover that I had bent my new rim. I was disgusted at myself, but I later discovered that this was just a glimpse of what the rest of the night was gonna be like.

We put another wheel and tire on and went out for the heat race. As I started the car, I noticed that it had a pretty severe push, so I made the proper adjustment by turning all my brake bias to the back. Each lap it continued to push even more.  I noticed my engine temp rising also, so on lap seven I pulled in as the car overheated.

I was pushed back to the pits by a push truck. We began working on the car, prepping it for the feature. The car fired and sounded good. We made other adjustments to the car, but no harm no foul...we were ready to go racin'.

The Sport Mod feature was called to go to staging, so I jumped in, strapped in, fired the car, and tried to put it into gear....only to have no gear to put it in. Yip, the push that I was feeling all night was caused by a dying transmission. It was the first time in five years that we had not made the feature. So we packed it in and headed up the road.

The Trailer "Tire"

Fifteen miles away from the track we experienced a blowout on the trailer. At 10:30 at night, in 90 degree heat, and on a pitch-black roadside. Racing is easy..........ha.... just so you know.