Before I get into anything, I have to sincerely thank Todd Walters (crew chief) and Dave Keyser (everything else) for working their butts off last weekend. We were short-handed for our trip to Oildale, and not only did these guys stay caught up with the car, they also managed to get video of every session we ran Saturday night! Video work is the pits because you don't really get to enjoy the races, but man is it useful for helping us improve - so THANK YOU guys!!!
Last weekend marked our second trip ever to Bakersfield Speedway and we were looking forward to the trip. We rolled out and ended up with a 15 car field at the speedway - not too bad for an "out of town" show.
Hot laps went off without incident and we timed in in the lower third of the field...we had a couple guys in our group that must have had dead batteries in their Raciever radios, which made things interesting... Qualifying was minutes after hot laps and we missed a bit on the setup, ending up with a hella loose car...the driver bonus being that he (me) was able to blast the pit stands as I was backing through turn two - Todd definitely got the message...LOL.
We made a ton of changes for the heat race, and everything went the right way...we went from 8th to 6th and had 5th lined up but we ended with a yellow/checkered so that was that. We were relegated to starting waaaaay in the back of the main event...14th out of 15, but we pretty much had one way to go.
The main got off to a decent start. We had made ALL the changes we could think of to deal with the dry-slick-as-glass track and the car felt decent getting going. We made progress from 14th up to 10th when the 9th place car went into a flat spin beyond the exit of turn 2. With pretty much nowhere to go, I locked the car down and drilled him with my right rear tire - hard enough that he ended up pulling in...as for us, we had some scuffing on our right rear, and we were able to tag the back of the field and end up with a disappointing 13th place finish. The good news is that we get to go back to Oildale in 3 weeks and we're looking forward to getting a handle on that place!!
Thanks to all the fans that made it out to see us, and don't forget to come by the pits and say Hi!
- Lance Jackson on Jun 26, 2019
- Article Date: 6/23/2019 by Lance Jackson