NEWS

I had asked a neighbor kid, Zach Johnson, if he wanted to be my pit crew for my first practice session. He accepted. We loaded up the kart and tools in the trailer and took off for the Mac Track at 10 in the morning. When we arrived, we pitched the tent and set out all the tools on the table. We helped Pops set up the scales at the scalehouse. I took the kart to the scale and weighed it and me with all my gear on. With no ballast, we hit 390 lbs, the exact weight for the WF Heavy class. It was very hot... around 100 deg.

My wife shows up at about this time and sets up her camera gear to take pictures of my first session. I start the engine and let it warm up a bit. I don my helmet and gloves, get in and take off! It was about how I had expected it to be. I started pushing it after a couple of slow warm-up laps. I was getting a bit of oversteer and overcooked it into the first corner and spun out. (Wasn't the first time that day). I was hitting the rev-limiter way too early down the straightaway, so when I came in I went down to a smaller rear sprocket.

I narrowed the front track a bit to try to counteract the oversteer and went out again. A lot better this time. I was still about 3 seconds off of the pace for a competitive lap (or so I was told), but I was getting better. I ended up being sidelined by a broken carb spacer, and packed up and went home.