It has been a couple of months, and I have gotten out of rookie class and now have my D class license. The first thing I did was start practicing and racing in the K&N series at Richmond. This, I now realize in hindsight , was a waste of my time. There was A class drivers in that race, and I was usually one of or the only D class in the race. I of course had to race at least four times in that level for promotion to C class, but my rating was still below three, so it really wasn't important. After ten or so races at Richmond, never finishing on the lead lap, and with one DNF, the series went on to Talladega, which was probably one of the most humbling experiences I have had so far.
At first, I knew I shouldn't race , coming to the realization that higher class racers race in lower division series on purpose ( this was a D class minimum series flooded with A class drivers ), I knew I should go back to the rookie class series and start working on going fast and staying safe. But then I watched one of the races, and watching that field , stacked three wide, going nearly 200 mph, nose to tail..... well, I had to try.
First race, I spent two sessions in open practice . It was neat seeing other cars right out side of pit road waiting for a drafting partner. I was like "oh right, hell yeah" . But as we got up to speed and into turns three and four, you quickly realize what kind of shit show this might become.
The car wants to leave the draft, and it gets to fast when in the draft. If you bump the lead, you lose speed and can fall out of the draft. If you bump slightly off center, they will wiggle and lift, and the risk of a wreck becomes almost unavoidable. Oh, and if you have someone behind you as well, this all of a sudden becomes ten times harder. I once read someone changed the ratio on their wheel to try and compensate for this, and it helped, but it was still more than difficult to hold on.
Open practice was fun, but the race was a disaster. I somehow lost all down force going into turn three and spun straight up into the wall, completely destroying my car. I was able to limp back to the pits but never could get up to normal speed and was around twenty miles per hour off the pace. I became a road block. My stupid ass decided to try it again, and the near same thing happened, this time on lap three ( so I felt better about it? ) , but this time I spun inward from outside while three wide, completely destroying both cars next to me. Who was one of them? Yeah, a pro champion, Graham Bowlin. Of course, I didn't realize it at the time. After I got my bearings, I was limping my way back to the pits when he slammed into me as I passed him ( he was probably on his way to the pits as well ). I quit the race, went to check his name and add him to a list of people to avoid when the next day I was reading and came across his name, to than learn he was a past champion. Yeah, I wasn't going back to K&N for a while. I just fucked up a champions race because I didn't belong in a race and went in anyways.
So I took a few days off and then looked at my choices. The rookie class street stock series only races at two tracks, and Charlotte at 145mph is boring as crap. And though I had been racing both legends and street stock, I knew I had to focus on just one. I chose legends.
Things were going descent, status quot really, until a week ago. I had one horrible race after another. So horrible, I was disqualified in two of them. Knocking my saftey rating down from 3.65 to 2.51 . But I was doing the same thing as before, qualifying low and trying to stay out of harms way. This had to stop. I need to be in the front, if not the pole. But to do this , I have to master cold tire hot laps. This practice led me to realize I needed to practice even more race less.
So this week, Legends are at Thompson Speedway. I practiced for two one hour sessions. Working on my corner entries and exits. I improved a few tenths both practice sessions, and yesterday was able to improve a few more tenths during practice. I was able to qualify mid pack, which was good. The race start was a bit of a pain in the ass and I racked up 6 incident points , but the remainder of the race I was able to not only stay on the lead lap, but managed to finish second.
This is the new plan. Practice more, cut times, rinse, repeat.
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