Hello Everyone,
It’s been a few weeks since the last edition to the blog here, but here comes another blog. Since last time, we’ve been to Salem to race and Kansas to test. Both went fairly well for us.
The Salem race I had high expectations of because we ran so well in the spring. Sure enough we unloaded and we were very fast off of the truck, at one time being the fastest in practice. We worked on the car just a little bit, but wound up changing back to close to what we unloaded at. After practice Kevin and I discussed different changes we made and what they did. We also talked about our qualifying effort coming up, and our expectations and goals for the run. Going out to qualify third was not the best way to start off, because as the day went on the track would get cooler and faster. However, I laid down one heck of a lap and qualified fourth surprising most everyone on the team and maybe a few people in the garage as well. Starting the race I was looking forward to starting up front again for the second week in a row. Everything seems to go a lot smoother when you are racing around cars more your speed. After the drop of the green flag, I started to pick off a position or two. Around lap ten, the 25 car and I got together racing for position off of turn two, eventually leading to a flat tire for the 25 going into turn three. The incident was a racing incident in my eyes, being that I gave him plenty of room coming off of the corner and we both sort of came together. Moving forward in the race we ran second for over half of the race keeping pace with the leader. After a pit stop I was taking my time coming back up through the field until the car became wicked loose all of a sudden. I was slipping and sliding like I was on the dirt track for two laps until the car finally hooked and sent me into the outside wall in turn two. This brought out the caution and I came down pit road, at this point we realized we were leaking oil. The eventual cause of the problem was a hole in the bottom of the oil cooler, dumping out all of the oil in the motor. This ended our night and put us finishing in seventeenth position.
From the Salem race, we went straight to Kansas for the open test on Tuesday. I was looking forward to the test because I knew we would be fast. We were fast in Chicagoland earlier in the year, and Kansas is a similar track so it was bound to be fun. Also for this test we had data acquisition on the car to give us useful information about the car and what it was doing on the track, as well as me. After a few runs we were third on the board and making different changes not worrying about speed, just about learning different aspects of the car and myself. The morning went extremely well and so did the afternoon session. A few cars went out and made some mock-qualifying runs, but we decided not to worry about our overall time and try to win practice. This put us fourth out of twenty-one cars that were at the test between the morning and afternoon sessions. I’m very excited to head back for the race, as is the team.
So, that’s catching you all up on what’s happened with me within the past couple of races. I just wanted to remind everyone that our contest on Race Talk Radio continues every Tuesday night where the Thunder Crew will ask a question pertaining to myself or our race team. The show starts at 8:00 p.m.
The first person who correctly answers receives one of our “What’s A Hacken-bracht” tee-shirts plus some of our very own Tastee Apples. The contest lasts until mid-October, so please tune in and win!
Until next time,
– Chad Hackenbracht
