Hello Everyone!
Well, rushed, could probably be the new word for this week if one was needed. This week, I’ve been at the shop until eleven fitting my seat in the road course car, and starting on the Michigan cars seat, it’s been a couple more long nights, but its part of the game. Enough about now, how about my weekend at Toledo Speedway last weekend?
Yet again we had rain, but at least we didn’t have any mechanical issues like what unfortunately, normally happens. I think we finally got everything worked out and it’s on to better finishes.
We started the weekend off, not on the best note but it was to be expected since I had never been on a track like Toledo in the ARCA car. We ran as many laps in the first practice session as we could and ended up seventeenth on the board. A half-hour later it was time for our next hour of practice, which halfway through I had a light bulb moment and picked up four tenths moving up to twelfth on the board, but very fast for how many laps were on my tires. We had nothing after practice so we were done for the day, but the rain wasn’t. It rained all Saturday night and into most of the day on Sunday.
On Sunday, the track didn’t open until ten o’clock, so everyone was able to sleep in and get good rest for race day. When we arrived at the track, there was literally a pond in the middle of the pits that we had to walk around and even had to jump over a part at one point.
Finally around noon I think, the rain stopped and the track drying was underway. Once the track was semi-dry we did driver intros, and hopped in the cars for the start of the race. After the command to start engines, I rolled off with the rest of the field, checked radios, pit road speed, and everything until we received the green and yellow flags together just like at Salem and we rode around for the first twenty laps drying the track until we went green.
I didn’t think it was going to be a good idea going green yet, simply because in turn three it was still soaked. But, after the green flew, I started picking off cars and finding my rhythm. For the first one hundred laps, we were extremely fast, especially through the center of the corners and I was running up on other cars really fast. Then we had a caution and we came down pit road seventh, put four tires on and went back out. After that pit stop, the car was never the same; I picked up chatter in the front tires and a four wheel drift up off the corner.
We aren’t sure what happened, the only thing we could find is that the right side tires were from a different batch of tires than all of the tires we had been running all weekend. I ended up finishing eleventh, after three cars with fresh right side tires passed me in the final ten laps. All in all it was a good day and I think the team and I are all very satisfied with the weekend as a whole.
Now it’s on to Jersey, which is the road course and I am very excited about. I haven’t run many road courses, but I ran a few in the Legends Car and I loved them. I also ran the three-day Skip Barber Driving School at Road Atlanta, as well as the two-day school at Road America. I had a blast doing both of those schools and I learned a lot.
Staying on track and improving on that 11th place finish is on our agenda this weekend!
I continue to be appreciative of everyone’s support of Tastee Apple, CGH Motorsports and myself.
Thanks for reading and don’t forget about those Tastee Apples, huh!
Until then,
– Chad Hackenbracht
