Hello Everyone!
Well, frustrated is the word of this week’s blog! That one word can pretty much sum up my race in Salem, Indiana. From the very first day we unloaded at the track we were fast and I thought it would continue throughout the weekend and it did but we didn’t get the finish we so rightfully deserved.
The first practice I went out behind someone who had past success at the track and followed their line to see if I could learn anything off of them. We were second on the board after these laps and then came in and made a change and kept going back out and doing the same. After making all of our race trim changes we were fourth quickest in the session and decided we had done enough to the car and it was time to make a mock-qualifying run.
My spotter gave me a clean opening on the track so that I would have no cars to worry about to have the cleanest and best simulation of qualifying. However on the very first lap, some other spotters decided to send their cars up in front of me on the track and completely killed our attempt. We finished out the practice seventh on the charts.
Heading into qualifying a few hours later, I went out for my qualifying lap and not knowing what the car was going to do in qualifying trim sine our practice run had been messed up, I took it easy unlike almost all of the other cars that were completely out of control. I ended up qualifying ninth, which may be a few positions lower on the board than practice; my lap time did not fall off from practice, which overall was good.
We started the race and ran twenty laps under caution to help dry the damp race track, and then went green. When the green flag finally flew I went off into turn one fairly easy to let things sort out on the still damp track, and then found my spot in line single file. I knew there was still 180 laps left in the race and knew I had plenty of time to pick off cars one by one.
Judging from most of the other drivers qualifying laps I knew that they would burn their tires off soon enough and come back to me if they got away. I was working on passing one car and accidently got him sideways going into turn one just before the first caution flew. I don’t remember exactly what position I was in after this caution, but we did not pit and it was back to green after that.
We did however pit on the following caution and take on two tires, fuel, and a small adjustment to loosen the car up, as did a few other cars in front of us. When we went back to green all short track action mayhem broke loose with me right in the middle of it.
For a good three or four laps eight of us were racing door to door with the faster and slower cars all jumbled up in the mix. I took the opportunity to run the bottom and pass all of them putting me in third position. I ran third for about ten laps until my issue.
I would go down into turn one and the car would pop out of fourth gear and I’d have to put it back into fourth. However, this only worked for about five laps until it finally just wouldn’t stay in fourth and I couldn’t even hold it into fourth gear. This ended our day — and too say the least the entire team was pretty upset about it, but in the end it’s just something we couldn’t control.
While the finish wasn’t what we wanted, the performance was encouraging for sure. Rob (Torrey, crew chief) and Kevin (Reed, director of competition) have done a magnificent job building this team up into a weekly contending race team in the ARCA Racing Series and I appreciate that very much.
We’re taking this same car to Toledo Speedway this weekend. I’ve never been there, but a lot of my crew has including Kevin. Last year, Kevin ran very well with Venturini Motorsports and his driver then Mikey Kile. I am hoping that we can finally have a weekend that everything glues together from start to finish.
I continue to be appreciative of everyone’s support of Tastee Apple, CGH Motorsports and myself.
Thanks for reading and don’t forget if you are coming to Toledo Speedway this weekend, you’ll be able to get a Tastee Apple at the concession stand! =)
Until then,
– Chad Hackenbracht
