Saturday morning - Up at 5:45 to get to the track early to get inspected and complete registration. This went really well. Many thanks to Lloyd and Kathy for helping lighten the mood for us and get us inspected properly. That really helped calm me down and allow me to truly enjoy the weekend. After Friday I was really tense. But after we were teched, I was ready to go have some fun.
I was first up on Saturday. One the second parade lap, the hood swung up on me and suddenly I was blind. DAMN! Luckily it was slow and the windshield was not damaged! A track worker pushed it closed, latched it, and I headed to the pits for an inspection. Hood seemed good, so off I went on a 'short' 40 minute stint. I was pretty happy with the car. It's not perfect, but it's a lot of fun. I started out passing three cars in the first lap and that was a lot of fun.
Greg drove next, then Jeremy, Erik, and Jeff. Then we repeated this, resulting in a lot of pit stops, some of which were pretty slow and disorganized. But it was a great learning day. With two races in the weekend, we could learn on Saturday and improve on Sunday. It worked great, although most of the other teams seemed to follow a similar plan of improvement.
The only other excitement of the day was Erik spinning the car right in front of the pits. He controlled the car well, got it back on the tack and kept going. Several people, including Lloyd, stopped by after to congratulate him on the good recovery and excellent show! Nice Job Erik. We don't have any video or photos of this, but hopefully somebody else captured it,
The car ran solid, accelerated incredibly, but pushed hard through corners. Clearly our setup needs to be improved. I guess no alignment after lowering the car does not handle great. Who knew? I'm also hoping to build a DIY fiberglass hood and a DIY rear wing. I think those would both help. For Iowa, windows might be good as well for aerodynamics, as it's suppose to be a fast track.
After the race we hung out at the track for a while before heading out to a Chinese Buffet and then to bed. Lot's of folks came out to support us on Saturday, which was great. Thanks to my Dad, Greg and Jeff's Mom and Dad, Sheldon and his two oldest boys, Danielle, who brought delicious cookies, and AnnMarie and a huge thanks to CO for helping us get organized on pits. His years of rallying really helped.
When Jeremy came in the passenger side rear tire was flat so a fresh one was put on for when I went out.
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