Ok, so the whole day wasn't this sunny, but it started out this way and it ended with some pretty awesome racing conditions so if you didn't make it out to Dukes Proscale Raceplex on Saturday night, you missed out to say the least.
The day started innocent enough. I knew that my iPad had a little picture of a cloud with rain coming out of it when I woke up in the morning but what the fuck do they know? I've made the mistake of trusting the weather report before and every time I've regretted it.
My racing mentor Butch Beebe says that once you make up your mind to go racing, you go no matter what. When certain people say stuff, you should write it down because you can take it to the bank. Butch's assertion is that, while the weather may look grim in Kalamazoo, it could be completely different two hours away. Keep in mind, Butch is not a weatherman. He could have been though. If I wasn't already committed to girls and binge drinking in college, I would have probably made it my major since you only need to be right about half the time to keep your job.
If it rains out, it rains out. So what? All you've missed out on is some chores around the house or a chance to get suckered into shopping for blinds with your wife under the guise of "family time".
It's true, we did get a ton of rain in the afternoon right up until 6pm. It came down to the point of completely saturating the track with standing water. But that sandy clay at Dukes just sucks up that water like you wouldn't believe. The track was soft, really soft, but we were racing by 8pm.
If you're a regular at Dukes, you know that you usually don't get very good bite until after the sun goes down. Last night, the traction was awesome right from the start and I'm not exaggerating. I wish Dukes was like that all of the time. It was a little dodgy marshalling, your foot made an imprint no matter how softly you tried to walk on it. Budding 4WD hot shoe Connor got stuck crossing the track a few times when it was still real soft.
How were my cars? The late model didn't start out that good, but I fought the push and got it plausible near the end. I managed 39 laps in the main. Unfortunately for me, Duke had the run of his life and turned in a 41 lap performance with 8 cars on the track. One for the ages to be sure. As far as close racing, 3 of us qualified within .3 of a second in a four minute heat. That's pretty close for dirt oval racing. Like I said earlier, traction everywhere. I think if I could have figured out how to get the damn thing to turn, I might have had a little something, but I don't know about 41 laps. Duke was the man.
There was a full heat of Sprint cars (6), which was nice for a change. The kzoolou GBX3 was hooked up right from the start. Nick had a rocket ship in the first heat, running foam tires. I think he had a 5.7 or 5.8 second lap. I didn't have my foams with me or I would have been all over that. As the night went on, Chuck Lonergan and Randy Erb clearly had the cars to beat. I just didn't do a great job driving and I could have probably geared up a little. In the end, I was pretty surprised, and pretty happy, that I was only a few seconds down to Randy in the main (chuck had an electrical issue). When he checked out at the start, I thought I was at least a lap down. I hit 40 laps, which I've never done in a sprint car at Dukes. I'm pretty pleased with that, although like any racer, now I want to get it to 41. I don't know how realistic that is unless Duke starts flooding the Raceplex on race day right up until race time.
Next week, I'm thinking about making a Thursday appearance at BFG if anyone is going to be there. PM me if you think you're going to make it.
Until next time.....
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