Just a day in the life of a kid going sixty miles an hour around a track on a Sunday afternoon. I submit to you, one fantastic round at Badger Raceway this past weekend.
Gridded 12th (of twelve) we faced an uphill battle in our final round of the 2011 Bridgestone Race Series. Disappointed would be an understatement if you asked us how we felt about this, seeing that we were gridded second in the prefinal and parked it on lap 4 with a skipped chain and missing rear bumper.
The whole weekend was a bit strange to be quite honest. We arrived late on Saturday to test, went out and did five very quick laps and parked it after the rear bumper fell off. Yes you read it right, it fell off on Saturday too! And with all of the vendor trucks in the paddock locked up tight, we had no choice but to scrap our plans of going any further for the day.
Sunday morning came and we collected the needed parts to put the kart back together again. Our first practice was impressive, eventually leading to an outside front row position for the prefinal just four one-thousandths off the pole sitter's time. But like I said earlier it would be short lived. I watched in total aggravation as the bumper slipped a tad on one side, then it began to droop, and then all hell broke loose and it let go. The bumper twisted itself in such a way as to jam itself in one wheel and launch the kart off the track in a very dramatic fashion. The ensuing return to ground caused the chain to pop off its sprocket and ultimately end our round.
After one very irritated driver calmed down, and one badly bent kart had been straightened, we returned to the grid to take our newly designated spot at the back of the field. So what do you say to your driver when the points are pretty much established in the season already, and he's situated at the tail end of the pack after yet another disappointing experience in a season plagued with this luck? You tell him to go out there and have a good time, that's what you tell him!
So even though his fight back to the front ended in only a fifth place finish, I've never seen him drive with that much determination before and I've NEVER seen him with a grin on his face as big as the one he had that day. Sure we wished that we could have gotten past some of the back markers sooner and posed a threat to the front runners but we already proved we were faster than all of them this weekend. And with a conclusion like that, I think we both can put this season behind us with a smile on our faces.
