MERIDIAN, Idaho – Racing a focus midget at Meridian Speedway on Sept. 24-25 was a mixed back in terms of results, but very successful and fun in terms of racing and development.
On one hand, I always expect to improve each time I get more seat time in a race car, but on the other I keep surprising myself with how much I’m improving.
Day one was rough but encouraging. Practice went off without a hitch as I aimed to learn the track and reacquaint myself with the car. My fastest lap was a 13.7 in practice and I was able to replicate that, going a few hundredths faster in qualifying. This was good enough for fifth in qualifying as we moved into the heats, where I started seventh of eight.
Your finish in the heat races mattered and the more positions you made up from your starting position, the more points you’d accumulate for the main.
Boy was the heat race hectic. I managed to avoid three different instances of cars spinning in front of me, but in two other instances I wasn’t so lucky.
The first happened when a car two positions ahead of me spun on the bottom of turns one and two. As I tried going around him, he came back up the track and made contact with me. The contact dented my left nerf bar and my left side exhaust pipe.
The damage wasn’t bad enough to stop, so I continued on. The second incident came on the final lap while I was racing for third. The driver I was racing tried to make a move from the top to the bottom into turn three, but he didn’t realize how close I was and we touched tires.
I almost spun out at top speed down the backstretch, but I recovered the car. Somehow I held off the fifth-place car coming across the finish line to earn a fourth-place finish. It was fairly eventful and luckily didn’t result in any damage that would keep me from racing in the 30-lap feature.
After the points were tabulated I qualified fifth. However, the polesitter drew an invert of eight, which meant I lined up fourth for the feature. We had a pretty solid run in the feature, but I did lose a few positions to the faster cars that started behind me because of the invert.
I was able to use a lap car to help me get alongside the car I was racing in front of me, a move on the outside that was a first for me. I’d never been able to properly execute an outside pass on someone that I wasn’t simply lapping before, so that meant a lot to me.
Unfortunately God has a sense of humor because two seconds later I was being put in the wall by a lapped car at the same moment when another car spun in turns three and four to bring out the caution flag.
The incident dented my right-rear tire rim and slightly bent my front axle. The damage was enough to end my night as my tire slowly deflated during the caution period and was flat one lap before the green flag waved.
It was certainly frustrating to not get a result that reflected the competitiveness of myself and the car, but I was also encouraged because I knew how good of a car we had.
We rolled into day two with a new nerf bar, new right-rear rim and a slightly bent axle and I was ready to take the day by storm. I got my fastest lap of the weekend in the first practice at 13.5 seconds.
This time qualifying happened in groups where our fastest time was taken from 14 or 15 laps. I turned six laps, assuming I’d gotten my fastest lap on lap five and probably gone even faster than I had in practice. I didn’t want to put too many laps on my tires either, so it made sense to stop after six laps.
Well, it turns out that I was actually slower than I was in practice at 13.6, which meant I qualified 10th. Everyone else ran as many laps as they could during their qualifying session, so I obviously made a blunder by coming in after six laps. I didn’t realize that Meridian is super easy on tire wear, so I didn’t have to worry about preserving my tires.
I still had a chance to make the invert in the main if the polesitter drew a 10, but I needed to do well in my heats to earn enough points to be in that position. I started fifth in my heat, which meant if I wanted to be 10th or better for the race I needed to pass a couple of cars and finish in the top-three.
When the race started I held my line on the bottom side-by-side with the car that started fourth, However, going into turn one and exiting turn two the car behind me made a move to the inside, hitting my left-rear quarter and pushing me into the car on the outside.
The contact made my car loose and forced me to check up. I tried to preserve my momentum, but I lost three positions and fell back to eighth. The heats were only eight laps each, so I had very little time to regain that lost ground.
I only managed to get back up to seventh and the pain from that disaster of a heat race was only made worse when the polesitter drew the invert I had been looking for, a 10. Instead of being in the invert, my point total meant I was starting 13th.
My frustration lasted only a moment before I decided I’d use this as a learning opportunity to try and pass everyone ahead of me who I was faster than. We made an adjustment prior to the feature to tighten the car up so I could run the top and pass people on the outside.
The car’s setup was just about perfect in the main. I managed to pass about five cars in the first five or six laps in both the inside and outside lines. Several cautions waved during the race, including two red flags.
I raced my way up to fourth and God’s providence shined on me as I avoided each wreck or incident in front or behind me. Things were finally starting to turn around. I had made my way up to fourth and I still believed I could go further.
However, late in the race I got passed by Jessica Bean, which dropped me to fifth. Things got interested when she tried to pass the car in third. They touched tires and she careened off the wall a couple of car lengths in front of me to bring out the caution.
This gave me the opportunity to challenge for third when the green waved with probably three laps left. I got a good start on the outside and was able to hold the line as I challenged for third.
I slowly gained the advantage, but on the next lap he squeezed me into the wall at the exit of turn four. This wasn’t slight contact and normally I might have backed out, but I wasn’t going to do that. I kept my foot in it and sailed the car into turn one to take third away.
The race was over two laps later and I drove into the pits a happy camper with a third-place finish. I had made up a bunch of positions and finished on the podium. I was pretty hyped up about it and couldn’t have been happier with the result after how much I struggled going into the race.
I’m planning on carrying this confidence forward into my next and final race of the focus midget season at Arizona’s Havasu 95 Speedway, where I’m hoping to clinch runner-up in the championship.