Hey everybody. I'm sorry I missed giving you a preview of the Salem Race. I've been awful busy and with it being vacation season at Kidd Tire it doesnt look like I'm going to get a break anytime soon. I'm not here to moan about "work" stuff, but if you dont mind I'll tell you about our race at Salem.
Our day started out easy as we were able to unload and get in line for tech really quick. Our crew, Jason, Josh, Chris, Joe, Mike, and HM really hustled and got everything set up in record time. I baby sat the car in the tech line with Joe. We sailed through tech inspection (first time all year without any major violations!) Our rear spoiler was a bit too high, as I had the rear ride heights up a bit. I had them up so we wouldn't bottom out the exhaust during practice. I ended up being able to bring them down during practice so the officials were happy with us when we went through pre-qualifying tech.
Practice was eh-so so. I know that's real descriptive, but hey what can I say. It was what it was. It took me a good part of practice to get comfortable running 8 inches off the wall. After I got "comfy" we were able to start tuning the car and we went up the practice sheet quickly. The car was a bit on the tight side, and something that was puzzling to me was that I still had a bit of steering input in it on corner exit, but more on that later.
I qualified the car 16th. Now, I know that sounds good, but in reality with only 24 cars taking time, it really sucked. The problem? I just got lazy in qualifying. Plain and Simple, I took turn 1 & 2 off and was concetrating on 3 & 4 too much. Had I put a whole lap together-we would have been a little closer to the front, but as the race would play out for us, it really wouldnt have mattered much.
The race started, and we held our own on the start. I wasn't as conservative on the start as I was at Mansfield and we ran well for the first several laps. Thirty laps or so into the race though, the car picked up a bad push on corner exit. I drove through it for a bit, thinking that a caution would be coming any lap. After a while though I had to change my line and start searching for a better way around the track. I tried diamonding the corner, that is driving in hard and low, letting the car drift in the center and then turning it hard left and coming off low. I tried late apexing with no success. I tried the high line and the low line, nothing worked. The push got worse and worse no matter what I tried. During the middle to late stages of the race, I pitted for adjustments and none really helped.
I just resigned myself to a crappy car and made the best of it. It was my intention to race the track for the race and try to put myself in position to get a good finish at the end. Well, I had to do just that, only for the entire race and not for a good (top 5) finish at the end. I guess what I'm saying is that I had hopes of racing smart and getting a top 5 out of it, instead I had to race smart just to finish the darn thing without tearing the RF corner off of it.
So what was the problem? First of all, I missed the setup badly. I brought a package that was similar to what we ran well with last year. It just didn't work this year. I think we had too much spring split in the front or something mechanically was just bound up. I haven't yet debriefed the car to see what was screwed up but i can promise that I wont take the same setup back to Salem next time.
Thats all for now.....next up MOTOR MILE!!!!
Our day started out easy as we were able to unload and get in line for tech really quick. Our crew, Jason, Josh, Chris, Joe, Mike, and HM really hustled and got everything set up in record time. I baby sat the car in the tech line with Joe. We sailed through tech inspection (first time all year without any major violations!) Our rear spoiler was a bit too high, as I had the rear ride heights up a bit. I had them up so we wouldn't bottom out the exhaust during practice. I ended up being able to bring them down during practice so the officials were happy with us when we went through pre-qualifying tech.
Practice was eh-so so. I know that's real descriptive, but hey what can I say. It was what it was. It took me a good part of practice to get comfortable running 8 inches off the wall. After I got "comfy" we were able to start tuning the car and we went up the practice sheet quickly. The car was a bit on the tight side, and something that was puzzling to me was that I still had a bit of steering input in it on corner exit, but more on that later.
I qualified the car 16th. Now, I know that sounds good, but in reality with only 24 cars taking time, it really sucked. The problem? I just got lazy in qualifying. Plain and Simple, I took turn 1 & 2 off and was concetrating on 3 & 4 too much. Had I put a whole lap together-we would have been a little closer to the front, but as the race would play out for us, it really wouldnt have mattered much.
The race started, and we held our own on the start. I wasn't as conservative on the start as I was at Mansfield and we ran well for the first several laps. Thirty laps or so into the race though, the car picked up a bad push on corner exit. I drove through it for a bit, thinking that a caution would be coming any lap. After a while though I had to change my line and start searching for a better way around the track. I tried diamonding the corner, that is driving in hard and low, letting the car drift in the center and then turning it hard left and coming off low. I tried late apexing with no success. I tried the high line and the low line, nothing worked. The push got worse and worse no matter what I tried. During the middle to late stages of the race, I pitted for adjustments and none really helped.
I just resigned myself to a crappy car and made the best of it. It was my intention to race the track for the race and try to put myself in position to get a good finish at the end. Well, I had to do just that, only for the entire race and not for a good (top 5) finish at the end. I guess what I'm saying is that I had hopes of racing smart and getting a top 5 out of it, instead I had to race smart just to finish the darn thing without tearing the RF corner off of it.
So what was the problem? First of all, I missed the setup badly. I brought a package that was similar to what we ran well with last year. It just didn't work this year. I think we had too much spring split in the front or something mechanically was just bound up. I haven't yet debriefed the car to see what was screwed up but i can promise that I wont take the same setup back to Salem next time.
Thats all for now.....next up MOTOR MILE!!!!
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