From personal bests to very disappointing lows, this weekend was one heck of a roller coaster ride. What started out as a fantastic test day on Friday, turned into a bad morning's worth of practice on Sunday.
We couldn't believe it. All Friday we were in the low 48's and ended with a couple of solid 48:00 laps. Deciding to do nothing other than put fuel in it for Sunday, we found ourselves back in the 49 second range. We were losing ground to a couple of drivers that I had to stay in front of if I was ever going to finish this season where I'd like to. Although I told my dad to leave the gears and everything else alone on the kart, he had his work cut out for him trying to find another 3 or 4 tenths of a second at least.
Once we got to the heat races everything started to work out for us. I was running up with my friend Alex and doing real good. My times were coming down and it looked like we were headed in the right direction. Things looked to be going our way again finally. That was until the second heat race.
All I can remember is spinning around in the air real fast and stopping even faster when I hit the hay bales. That's right, I finally had that "big one" that my dad told me I would eventually have. He told me that no one goes through a racing career without having a spin, or a crash or two. He's had them and I was bound to have one too. I remember beating Taylor, who drives the number 7 kart, onto the front straight. When I went to line myself up for turn one, we touched and both of us crashed at full speed. My dad said that even with my neck collar on, my head had been snapped in so many directions that he thought I had broke my neck. They red-flagged the race and had to take about 10 minutes to clean the track up, remove the karts, and get me off the track after they checked me out.
We went back to our pit and I sat down to rest. My neck was a little sore and I had a headache but I still felt ok to race. My dad said if I didn't feel good we could pack it up and head home. The kart was pretty messed up so it didn't matter too much to him. He either had a lot of work to do here or at home, and him and my mom were worried that I had hurt myself more seriously. I told them that I felt fine and we chose to stay.
Several broken or bent parts later we had something that looked pretty close to the kart that we started this day out with. The only thing that we couldn't touch was my rear bumper. It was bent so bad that to even loosen it might snap the bolts and end our day. After all you can't run without a bumper. Those are the rules.
We had so much hay, grass, dirt, and stones packed into every corner of the kart we thought we were going to be spilling things all over the track if we made it out for our feature. My sister and mom went to work on the wheels and tires, and my dad and I pulled everything we could reach out of the bodywork. With minutes to spare until we had to get to the grid, we were done. Off to the pump-around and then to find out where I'm gridded in the field.
We started seventh out of nine karts in my class. I was gridded on the inside of row 4 with a slower kart in front of me and a fast line of karts on the outside. I decided to follow the kart on the outside through turn one since I might lose too much time trying to find a way around the driver in front of me. It worked, and I was in 5th place by the next turn. I was right on Taylor's rear bumper for the entire race and was having a real hard time getting around him. He's faster than me on the straights but he's much slower on the inside of the track where all of the turns are. The problem is that he's always in my way and never leaves me much room to try and pass. That changed when we came up on back traffic. I went to the inside of the kart in front of us and Taylor went to the outside. The slower kart had moved over a bit when I came through and then slowed Taylor, giving me 4th place. This happened on the white flag lap and all that I had to do was not make a mistake and my first 4th place finish was mine. He never caught up with me and that's how we finished.
My Grandparents and my Aunts were there to see this. Everyone was very happy and proud. This was a great way to end a weekend that started out good, got bad, and then got even worse. Of all the places that I had to crash, I had to do it right in front of my mom. My dad had seen the whole thing too but it was my mom that really got shaken up. My dad said it takes a lot of courage to bounce back from something like this. To do it AND take 4th place is just great!
One last thing that my dad and I have to say is Congratulations to Pete and Willie Kootstra. Pete locked up the championship on Sunday with his win over Zach Hawley. With two races left my friends Zach and Alex are looking like the next close battle. We're all pretty close to one another in points so it can be anybody's guess where we will finish.
