What a weekend. We just wrapped up our last "Twin Main" night for this season, running races 8 and 9 last Saturday.
We started out with both my car running twin mains in the Vintage Modified division and Ashley's car running twin mains in the Mini Stock division. A lot of racing action and a lot of work ahead of us, making for a very busy day. We managed to pit both cars right next to each other so we could pool everything into a single giant pit stall, so that was nice.
Practice started out rather well. Ashley went out first and I ran over to spot for her, just to try and get her back in the groove. We got things going fairly quick, she got back in her rhythm within a few laps and was running pretty good. Then I went out for my first session and to our surprise the car was pretty good. We had made a lot of changes to it after the last race so we were kind of going in a little blind. there's nothing like changing your entire setup direction mid-season, but sometimes you just gotta take a really big swing. And luckily, it looked like it was paying off. It was a very hot day and I knew I had a decent car, so I kind of decided to not get too crazy and maybe try to just make some small adjustments and let the guys focus on the Mini Stock. It's hot, I don't like working my guys to death, so let's just sort of work with what we've got. I also decided to just skip the bulk of the practice sessions and just wait until the final session. It's a bit of a gamble, you either spend all day chasing a hot track that's probably gonna change, so you're making adjustments that you'll probably take back out anyways. Or you wait and get one shot to get it right, maybe you hit it, maybe you don't.
The guys found a couple issues on the Mini Stock and they started working on trying to fix those issues. It took some time and that caused her to miss all of the rest of her practice sessions, leaving only her qualifying session to get some seat time. Not a good scenario. In the mean time, I got geared up for that final practice session. We must have hit it, because we topped the charts, ending the final practice session fastest of the 11 cars on hand. Not bad, not bad. But I knew the fast guys would find a couple tenths for qualifying.
Ashley's qualifying session would come first. She went out and didn't stay out too long before her spotter brought her back in. The car was just running really sluggish and the engine sounded like it was laboring really hard. A quick inspection would reveal that it was mixing water in the oil, a tell-tale sign of an engine blowing up. So her night was done. On a good tone, she did manage to qualify 5th out of the 7 cars on hand. Not bad girl!
Next up would be me, and I was right, those fast guys found a couple tenths and we were about 4th quick on the board. I brought it in real quick, we made an adjustment and I went back out and grabbed P2 before the session ended. I just couldn't get that 18 car, that thing is so crazy fast. But 2nd quick is pretty dang good, I'll take it. 😎
That placed us in the back row of the Trophy Dash. For those not familiar, the Trophy Dash is just a 4 lap race with the fastest 4 cars, inverted (fast guy starts dead last, slow guy starts on the pole), no points, no nothing, winner takes all. "All" being a $5 plastic trophy, but I'll tell you from past experience, it's pretty cool to take that trophy. 😉
We decided to use it as a practice session and made another adjustment, furthering the adjustment from qualifying. If a little is good... Yeah...no. When the green flag flew I started to take it easy and just test, but suddenly I found myself 2nd looking at the leader and thinking "Okay, now we gotta make a run at this." I mean, you can't just let him cruise around and take that trophy! SO I got after it pretty hard, and nope, that adjustment didn't work. It was just too much, we'd gone too far and now the car wasn't as good. I kept him honest and made him run for it, but we had nothing for him.
Back to the pit and back that adjustment back out. Remember what I told you about chasing a hot track, making tons of adjustments and taking adjustments back out as the track cools off? Here you go. From there we lined up for our main event, with the invert it placed us towards the back, starting 7th of the 11 car field. A long way to go. I started off a bit easy, there was a couple cars in front of me that I'm not terribly comfortable racing around, they do strange things and put themselves in bad spots and I don't like being part of that. So I gave them a little extra space and chose to go gently. In short order though, I found myself running 3rd and hot on the heels of the 2nd place car with a solid 15 laps to go. At that point you're starting to think "I can make a charge at this one" and you start really getting up on the wheel. I've got time, let's go get it! For about 10 laps I dogged the 2nd place car, trying to find a chink in his armor, looking for that gap I could exploit. He was doing a great job of blocking, protecting his line. Yes, some would call it "mirror driving", but it's his right. It's his track, it's his line, it's up to me to take it from him. And I kept working on it, giving him shots in the back almost every corner to let him know I'm there. Not hitting him so hard it spins him, just a "hey bro, I'm still here, and I'm all over you" kind of thing. That's stock car racing, and it was glorious. Then, with 5 laps to go, it all happened. I felt like I got a good drive off turn 4 and moved to his inside as he swept up towards the wall. I felt like I had a tire inside of him and saw turn 2 as a late braking opportunity to dive-bomb it in there and take the spot. So I shoved it in pretty deep and stood on the brakes, and then I saw him coming down to cover it. By that time it was too late, I was committed to the inside, there was no way to get out of there at that point. And...we made contact, and we both spun.
So let's back up for a bit here and talk about this, of course from my point of view. I fully understand that his will differ. Again, I felt like I had a good drive off 4. And, I felt like I had a tire alongside him well before the braking point. Is a single tire enough to establish the position? No, probably not, I'll fully admit that. I was hoping he would flinch, and he didn't. On the flip side, if you're mirroring a guy for 10 laps, you should expect something eventually. Would I have moved over and let a guy by if it was me? No, probably not. But it's called a "race car", it's not called a "follow the leader car", it's not called a "sit behind the other guy car"...it's called a "race car" and I chose to do race car things, so I stuck it in there. Once we hit, all I was thinking was "please don't get the wall". Look, I don't like broken race cars, I don't care whose car it is. I understand the financial impact, the time impact, the stress impact that it places on you. I didn't mean to wreck him, I didn't want to wreck him, I had no intentions of ruining both of our races, because we were both having a great race. But at some point you have to try something and again, I felt like that was the only opportunity I had. Laps are winding down. If you miss that chance, you don't have enough laps left to recover and try again. It didn't work, and for that I'm sorry. My guys have told me 100 times "If you tear the car up going to the front, we'll fix it. Now, if you tear it up racing for last, we're probably gonna kick your ass. But if you tear it up going to the front, we got you!"
When it was all said and done I had destroyed my right front wheel, right front tire and managed to rip the sway bar mount out of the right front lower control arm. I drove the car back to my pit literally dragging the sway bar on the ground, 3-wheeling all the way back. It had also cost him a left rear wheel, possibly his left rear tire, I know the toe was knocked out of it so it probably cost him one or more front tie rods. At this point I'm immediately thinking we're done for the day, I've got no sway bar on the car now, it's just dangling. I was honestly pissed at myself for ruining that race for both of us. We discussed doing a start and park to at least get points, but my guys don't know how to quit and they went to work to try and fix it. After some time they had managed to get the sway bar mount rigged back together, but the process had completely bound up the right front suspension so we really had no clue if it would even turn or not. You're basically going to be sending it into turn 1 blind, hoping for the best.
After being credited with last place in the first main event, the invert placed me on the pole of the second main event, alongside the guy I just wiped out. Not knowing exactly what my car was going to do, I chose to drop to the back so that if it didn't turn, I wasn't wiping anyone out again. In my mind, it felt like the safest option. In hindsight, horrible decision. 🤣
When the green flag flew I went real easy for the first lap, but the car seemed really good. In fact, it was better than it had ever been. I think it was lap 2 that I set it in pretty hard and it rotated better than it ever had. From that point on it was "full send", I just went to work. It took a little time to work my way through the field, and we got a lucky caution in there somewhere that bunched us back up. With the restart I was lined up 5th, but that's the inside line, which is good. It didn't take very long after that restart and I found myself holding 2nd place, looking at the leader again. It was a fun drive through the field, we really had a great car, but I just had nothing for that 18 car again. I chased him as hard as I could, but he just drove off into the sunset. We would up with 2nd place in this one. I'm good with that, it was a long night of ups and down and to run 2nd to that car is a testament in itself, I'll take it.
So, to recap, we were P1 in final practice, P2 in qualifying, P2 in the Trophy Dash, I totally blew the first main and finished 11th and then we grabbed P2 in the second main to cap off the night. We've got a lot of work to do to figure out why the car was so good after the repair, then figure out how to replicate that correctly and consistently. But luckily we have two weeks off before we head back to the track on August 13th. The down side is, we only have two weeks off to figure out what happened to Ashley's engine and get that fixed as well.
On a side note, I do want to give a shout out to Shawn Jones and Jack Franks. Shawn had brought Jack's Mini Stock car out to just have some fun and play around, and when Ashley's engine let go Shawn offered to put her number on his car so that she would get his points for the night. There was a lot of drama surrounding it, but it's a huge thing for Shawn and Jack to offer to do that. Shawn had a great night so Ashley actually got some decent points. In the grand scheme of things it's not going to make that big a difference in the standings, but the entire team is thankful for the gesture from Shawn and Jack, it shows true sportsmanship still exists. We thank you both greatly!