MSOKC Race No. 10 – September 5, 2009 – Hog Roast!

NEWS – The annual Mid-State of Ohio Kart Club Race Hog Roast event was preceded by Race No. 10 a week ago Saturday. To allow plenty of time for food and fun in the evening, the race was a qualifying format event at CRP that followed the normal Sunday (non-night race) schedule. Peter attended a driving clinic the weekend before and logged a massive 84 laps in our Yamaha SuperCan kart. We also took this opportunity to do some back-to-back tire testing for Conor in our 8Occ shifter kart. Both Peter and Conor had new tires for Race No. 10 – Bridgestone YHCs for Peter and YKCs for Conor – and Conor had new extended front wheel hubs to help with his understeer problem.

PRACTICE – Conor went out during open practice to give his new hubs a try and to scuff in his new tires. Peter practiced initially on old tires before scuffing in his new tires in the second practice session. Conor was content with his set-up during his first class practice session and elected not to go out for his second session.

YAMAHA JR. SUPERCAN – The combination of new tires and applying what he learned during his driving clinic resulted in a new personal-best lap time for Peter during his qualifying session (46.449 seconds). Unfortunately, the other karts in his class have also been getting faster throughout the season and many of the slower karts have stopped coming, which resulted in a fifth place starting position (out of seven) for Peter. With the starting order determined by qualifying times, qualifying format races tend to be a follow-the leader affair. Except for a great start in his heat race, which netted him a promotion to fourth place for the first three laps in his heat race, that was exactly the case for Peter’s day. After finishing fifth in his heat race, he started and finished fifth in his feature race. He did manage to improve on his personal-best lap time in both his heat race and his feature, however (46.204 and 46.042, respectively). He is knocking on the door of a sub-46 second lap.

8Occ SHIFTER – Conor put a nice series of laps together during his three-lap qualifying session, which resulted in the third place starting position for his heat race (out of nine). He lost one position but gained another at the start. He dropped a position on Lap 3 and finished fourth. Conor got away reasonably well from the fourth position at the start of his feature race, but the kart that started in third jumped the start which impeded Conor’s progress somewhat and allowed the fifth place starter to get around Conor in Turn 1. The next 10 laps were frustrating for Conor. While he was quite a bit faster than the kart in front of him, he could not find a way to get by and finished fifth. Conor’s best lap time for the day was only 0.2 seconds slower that his personal best, so we seem to be going in the right direction on the new YKC tires.

NEXT RACE – The penultimate race of the season is another qualifying format event on Sunday, September 20, 2009 at Circleville Raceway Park. It is also a reverse direction event, which both boys seem to enjoy. The day prior to this (today!) is Conor’s 17th birthday. Happy Birthday Conor!

Bill

p.s., Lap times, lap charts, and results can be found at http://www.mylaps.com/results/showevent.jsp?id=468804.