Why is it that I can't even buy a break sometime? I'm a pretty nice guy for the most part. I could stand to go to church a bit more than I do but I give back to the community, I help people who are in desperate need of help, and I hold the door for the elderly. So why in God's name can't we finish a Midwest Sprint Series race?
Turn the calendar back one year ago and you would undoubtedly see and hear me in the same state as I am today. Same event, different problem. Unlike this year when I failed to give my son a kart that could hang on to its chain for more than three laps, I was fighting carburetor demons that were making us painfully slow. I actually fired our last engine builder because of this. No power and no support whatsoever makes me a very irritated boy.
So with new engine builder in hand we set off for our second stab at trying to show the competition what the hometown team has. But this year was not to be it either. As mentioned earlier we developed a strange problem of throwing chains in every session. We went through everything- engine plates, sprockets, and alignments with no relief. Many speculations were made as to what could have been causing it but none of the remedies netted any results. We finished the weekend with DNF's in both HPV Junior Lite and Heavy. July 24th through the 26 of the year 2009 will go down in history as one of the most expensive, frustrating, and heartbreaking weekends of our lives.
But wait, there's more!
The weekend of August 2nd had us back at Badger for the 11th round of the Bridgestone Championship series and you guessed it, we had our third DNF in two weeks! The worst thing about it was that after all of the checking and double checking of each component on that kart, we still managed to throw another chain but it waited until there was two laps left of the final. With the exception of the sheared kingpin bolt in our first practice session that literally caused the left front to implode on itself, the day went pretty much event free. We even bested our fast time of the year by two-tenths of a second. So to say it was disappointing to us would be an understatement.
The funny thing about this whole fiasco is that we never really changed anything from what worked for us in the past. Some say it's the composite sprockets we use, maybe they're wearing out. If so, I'm installing aluminum sprockets for our next race. I've heard that the type of engine mount that we currently use could be causing too much flex. Well then, we're going back to the old standard. Whatever it is, I'm expecting it to be gone by the 16th. I'm running out of reasons why and more importantly, our driver's patience.
