All I can say is that it's good to get back to some kind of normalcy. Even if it was a bittersweet weekend of sorts.
In our usual fashion we finished second in our feature and managed to consistently bring our lap times down session after session. This, combined with the fact that we had relatives in attendance who flew in from out of town for our family reunion, made for the sweeter portion of our day.
Sam was definitely on his mark all day, posting lap times in the mid 42 second range. Not to take anything away from his efforts but for the first time this season they started the faster class behind us for a change. In HPV Jr. Sportsman there are so few entries that the club has been combining other classes in with us. Until this weekend they were doing split starts with the faster group out front. Now having changed that, Sam was faced with faster and older drivers bearing down on him at a very rapid rate. This must have been just the motivation that he needed to perform as well as he did. You could tell he really didn't want this bunch to catch him. This change just may have been what the doctor ordered to light a fire under him and get us going faster.
On the bitter end of things we found out that our frame is indeed bent. We'd been speculating on it since his crash at Blackhawk but weren't absolutely sure until this weekend when we had the kart on a flat pad and scales. It's very minor but just enough to have thrown the front end out of alignment, leaving Regan Vehring of 4-Cycle Central to come up with an alternate way to straighten everything back to as close to normal as possible. Mission accomplished though as the kart never appeared to be sluggish or darty and Sam never complained of feeling anything out of the ordinary. It never fails though. Last season we had an 8 year old well used chassis and ran it into a variety of things. Never once did it appear to be bent. This season with a brand spankin' new chassis we run into someone just once and the outcome is totally different. It's kind of like not being able to pay someone to crash into your $100 beater car but the moment you pony up the 30 grand for a new one, a rogue shopping kart finds your shiny new passenger door.
Anyway Sam and I want to thank everyone in our family who showed up this weekend, especially Frank Jr. who helped out all day in the pits and back at our trailer. I think we're safe to say that he enjoyed himself as much as we enjoyed having him. And I think I can recall hearing him mutter the words "I'd like to get me one of these" a few times so maybe, just maybe, some day there will be another Marmurowicz blazing a trail at an Atlanta area kart track sometime soon.
