Friday The 13th 7-13-12

Friday the 13th, one is always aprehensive on that day.  Although I am not superstitious, I don't believe in taking chances.  I had on my lucky T shirt, left home at the same time as usual, took the same route, filled up the truck at the same gas pump at the Shell station in Grand Bay, AL, and parked in my usual pit stall.  I had done my part so lets see if Lady Luck will smile on us tonight.
We got to the track on time, the track opened at 5 pm due to the Friday night program.  Got the car registered, went through tech, got on the track for a few practice laps, God, that track was slick.  Track temp was 124 degrees, couldn't tell much about the car but Connelly said other than being loose (hot track) it felt good. 


QUALIFYING:  The participants tonight were the #53 of Jeremy Lundy, the #7 of Hunter Lewis, the #44 of Joseph McArdle, the #10 of Chad Robinson, the #39 of Daniel Thompson, the #04 ofDawson Kenner, the #59 of Terry Myers, the #55r of Ronnie Osmer, the #94 driven by a new driver who just purchased the car, this being his first race. and of course the #32 of Connelly Dubuisson. 
Connelly qualified third, 2 one hundredths of a second behind second place #53 and 8 one hundredths of a second behind the pole sitter #7 of Hunter Lewis and only 1 onehundredth of a second ahead of the #44 of Joseph Mcardle.  A very close field the first four qualifiers were within one tenth of a second of each other.

HEAT RACE:  We started on the outside front row in the heat race and before we could  get to the inside we were third behind the #7 and #10.  It was an uneventful heat race with Connelly driving the #32 to a third place finish only one car length behind the #10, but almost a quarter of a lap anead of the 4th place car.  Connelly was never more than 2 car lengths behind the  #10 at any time in the heat.

FEATURE RACE:  In the feature, Connelly started in fifth position because of his heat race finish (there were two heats)  We raced in fifth place for the entire race always in touch with the #10 (who held down fourth place) but never quite able to pass.  Connelly got alongside of the #10 at one point but before he could complete the pass, a caution came out and the restart was determined by the last completed lap prior to the caution, back to fifth.  The #32 appeared to be a handful to drive, he wasn't able to keep it on the bottom in the turns and he was snappy loose coming out of the turns especially #4.  As a result he could not get back to the throttle as soon as he needed to coming out of the turns and on several occasions after he got back to the throttle he had to "burp" it to get the rear end back under him.  I didn't realize how bad the car was handling until I saw the in car video.  His hands never stopped moving.  He was definately sawing on the wheel.  A fifth place finish was not what we were looking for, but under the circumstances, we'll settle for it.  We gained pionts and are within 8 points of third place.  The finish of the feature was #53, #7, #44, #10, #32, #39, #04, #59, #55, #94.  In his first race the #94 did a great job, he didn't spin didn't get involved in any incidents, and overall handled himself and his car well.

I couldn't wait to get a look at the  car and try to figure out what was causing our "tight in the center" problem.  After going over the car with a fine tooth comb, we found that we set the fender bracket too low and the right front fender was draging on the tire in the turns so much that it cut a groove in the tire.  That rub was causing the right front to not turn as freely as the left, causing the tight in the middle problem.  The "snappy loose" off was caused by Connelly having too much "wheel" in the turn to try and hold the car down in the center that when he ran out of banking coming off the turns, the car was jumping out from under him.  We have gotten all of that corrected and am looking forward to the next race July 28th.

CONCLUSION:  I have learned that the secret to sucessfully running a Legend racing team is that there is no SECRET, just constant and deliberate attention to a thousand small details, all of which have to work in harmony to make one of these little boogers run.  It is a slow process, but we are learning.