Anyone who has ever been involved in any form of motorsport will read this post and immediately relate to it. Resting on the old adage: "That's racing".
In no way was I myself or my son ever promised that anything in this life comes easy. We've never expected it to be but it would just be nice to catch a break every now and then. I've written about bad times before but nothing compares to this last event at Blackhawk Farms Raceway. We've had bad days before but never three consecutive days in a row! Were the gods angry at me? And if I did something to deserve this why punish my entire family for it? It really started to look like someone upstairs had it in for us or was trying to test us in some way.
We decided to leave for the track on Thursday night to get an early start on Friday's all day practice session. That night we spent sleeping on the floor of the trailer and it should have been some indication of things to come but how comfortable can one be in a trailer anyway? We woke to what looked like a fine day of practice. A little warm, but sunny and not a cloud in the sky. The only tiny drawback was that all of us were a bit sore, under rested, and in need of a shower.
Sam took to the track in his first session of the day but never came around for his first lap. I hunted down an official and he told me there was a report of a driver off in turn three and that he was out of the kart and OK. What could have gone wrong? Everything was checked and double checked before he went out so it must have spun on cold tires I thought. I wouldn't get to really know until the end of the session so the important thing for now was the fact that he's fine.
The truck and trailer came down the track carrying back to us one filthy Margay kart and one dejected driver. On the outside it looked like what took place was a simple spin off course into a really wet area. I mean there was grass and mud on every square inch of the thing. On the contrary, what had happened he said was that another driver much further up the track from him had spun off course and then right back on in front of him. Sam didn't have alot of room to get by him and eventually made contact with his right rear, almost kicking himself clear out of the seat. Hearing this I attempted to spin the rear wheels and confirmed my worst expectations - the axle was indeed bent, 4 teeth were ground off of the sprocket, and we had a severely deformed brake rotor. Pretty much the entire back end was broken or bent in some way.
I walked what seemed like the entire paddock and eventually found all of the parts we needed. In the process I also managed to consume all of the cash that we had with us for the weekend! What was equally bad was the fact that what had originally been thought of as being a quick fix took almost four hours of our day to correct. The axle I found was not for a Margay and the keyways didn't line up properly. This forced us to become creative with how we had to offset it to make everything else line up. With this done we returned to the track for only two short practice sessions that were left in the day but never really reached our stride. We decided to toss in the towel, check in to our hotel, and get some much needed rest.
Our bad luck continued on Saturday when we failed to get to the track in time for our first of two scheduled practice sessions. When the second session finally came we never even made it out of the pits with what was thought to be a suspected fuel delivery problem. No need for panic, we're just going to have to fix it and hope that our intended set-up is going to work for our race today. Unfortunately for us the disappointment wouldn't stop there. When the green flag finally flew on our race Sam managed to drive the kart about 100 feet before it coughed and died on him again. With the help of several individuals along pit row we repeatedly tried to start it and get him back on the track but to no avail, it just wouldn't stay running.
Sick with the thought that I finally had something wrong with the kart that I couldn't diagnose, I took the carb off and brought it to Don from L.A.D. Specialties. He spent nearly the entire afternoon helping us out and answering all of our questions while we tried time after time to put it together and pull it apart in our quest to make this engine run again. I can't thank him enough for his knowledge and all of his help because by 5pm when the track closed for the day we finally had a kart that would move again under it's own power. We all went back to the hotel very optimistic in our chances for tomorrow's race.
Now it's one thing to experience bad luck at the track, but it's totally another issue when it seeps into your personal life as well. It's about 3am and we're all awakened by a drunken lover's spat in the hotel room next to us. After about an hour of listening to their shouting and banging I decide to skip my intended idea of strangling them myself and call the front desk instead. Problem solved. At least for an hour until they chimed up again but I think we were all so beat we were finally able to sleep right through it.
The alarm at 6am came way too soon. We all got up, showered, and got ready to check out when my son noticed how dark it was for 6:30 in the morning. It did seem strange to me at the time but I just discounted it as overcast skies and continued to pack the truck to get to the track. It wasn't until my wife looked at her watch and noticed that it was 5:30am that we truly knew why it was so dark. Now I remember. Before we went to sleep the night before I had a problem with the alarm clock in the room and mistakenly set the time ahead by an hour. Yesterday we were late, and now today we have more than enough time. This all wouldn't matter anyway as the rain began to fall just as we got to the track and eventually washed out all racing for the day.
So there you have it. Several hundred dollars later and only two sessions out on the track. The only thing that we learned from this weekend is that it's going to take a lot more than this to break us. And do you want to know the biggest farce of it all? For making it just barely past the timing and scoring tower in our race on Saturday, Sam was awarded with his very first win. It seems that in our race group of about 6 classes Sam was the only one registered in HPV Jr. Sportsman. All he had to do was take the green flag to receive a first place finish and a nice plaque to show for it. I would have rather looked back on this as a nail-biting back and forth fight to the finish with him being the ultimate winner but when you think of it, this isn't all that bad of a story either.
