12th
Blog for August 9
Well this past weekend’s race at Lanier National Speedway was just one weekend away from the national qualifier which is going to be held there next weekend. So this past weekend was just as much a practice as it was anything, but it was also another week’s race. I took the same setup there this past weekend that I have been running very well with but with just a few changes. One change was one in which I controlled which was a piece of lead on the car… I was too light. The other change was the track. I went out for practice and was pushing like an absolute freight train. I mean I couldn’t even touch the gas on corner exit or it pushed right into the wall. When I came in and started looking at the track during the driver’s meeting it hit me that the track had an absolute downpour on it earlier in the week so there was no rubber on the track. As I watched the rest of the guys have there qualifying heats and practices I could tell that everyone was BAD tight. In the pits before my heat race I made a wedge adjustment to loosen up the car and it helped quite a bit. From practice to the heat race I knocked off seven tenths of a second. I started on the pole in the heat race and wasn’t quite good enough to hold on to the number one spot. However myself and the second place car swapped the lead two or three times until one of our competitors came from the back of the pack to just go screaming by us. He was fast! I ended up third in the heat race and came in and didn’t touch the car. I was expecting the track to come to me as cool as it was supposed to get and as much rubber that was going to get put down but it didn’t get quite enough put down to satisfy my car. I also think my setup wasn’t working because of the lead I put on the car so I have to go back and rethink that for the qualifier. Well the main race came around and I found myself starting in fifth place. At the start of the race I was running in fifth place comfortably until we had a few cautions back to back on lap five. After the first caution we had the choose and I could have gone outside and picked up a position or two but I had a gut feeling that said don’t go high this time. Turned out my little gut was right this time because when we came back around to the start finish line after the restart I was under a wreck that happened going off into turn one. The next choose I went outside and found myself sitting in second because of it. On the restart the first two guys got away from me. They were stout. But the third place car and I weren’t seperated by much at all. The rest of the race was run under green flag and I was just watching the leaders slowly pull away from us in the third and fourth positions. The third place guy wasn’t gaining on me and I wasn’t loosing to him but I just couldn’t get up there and rattle his cage the way I would have liked to. I brought the Aaron’s Dream Machine home to a well run fourth place finish and I learned a lot this weekend too. Hopefully I know enought now for the qualifyier where I can run in the front of the pack and compete for the win.
