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     It’s late Early May and the racing season is still very young. Our first race of the season was good at the Tulsa Shootout, and I had high expectations going forward.

      The East Bay Winternationals didn’t go quite as planned, while we ran reasonably well in the heats, but the car just wouldn’t perform in the feature races. I can now look back and attribute it to a lack of attention to detail on my part and a few other things beyond my control. The opening night I won my heat, and started 3rd in the feature, after running 2nd most of the night I lost position on the last few laps to come in 3rd. The second night again winning the heat, but a total misread in the feature resulted in a 5th place finish. The final night I raced to 2nd in the heat and then had a semi-decent car in the feature I only could muster a 2nd place finish. This gave me 2nd place overall in the Winternational Speedweek Championship. Luke Thomas was clearly the class of the field winning all three nights. One good thing about the trip to Florida was getting to meet Blake Fuller of Braille Battery and his family. He owns the company that makes my batteries , and has some very innovative products. One of the highlights was getting him to drive my spare car for the final 2 nights. He did well the first night making the feature, but falling just short the second night. I think he enjoyed himself immensely and did quite well for his first time ever in one of these cars.

      Next up was the I-30 600 Nationals make up race on March 11th and 12th. I had a good run on the opening night heat race coming from 6th to 1st, then backing it up in the qualifier going from 9th to 2nd. The feature that night was postponed due to rain which was unfortunate because the track would have really been racy. The following night we made that feature up with me starting 3rd, and I faded slightly on the start to 4th, but once the track took rubber and I managed to get the tires hot I started moving forward, advancing to 3rd and finally catching the leaders just as the checkered flag came out. No worry though the top 4 places was the goal so I could lock myself into the A-Main for the Saturday finale. Saturday comes and in the dash I drew 6th starting spot and raced my way to 4th, in the feature I was expecting the track to be slick early and then take rubber late. I guessed wrong, it was too fast around the top and my gearing limited me in that regard, I was expecting to be around the bottom and wanted that extra pull when the rubber came in. I had some good battles with Dicely for 4th, but about half way through I had an ignition failure and had to pull in, ending my streak of top 2 finishes at the 600 Nationals. It was disappointing, but I did run well and the car handled good, just had some bad luck.
      I took a few weeks off to regroup and get ready for the Clarksville, TN $2,000 to win show. I’ve won this race for the past 5 years so I really enjoy racing at this track. We get there and qualifying doesn’t go well I time in 13th quick, the late draw didn’t help, but I chose the wrong line and this cost me. My times were 13.000 and 13.004 so it wasn’t lack of consistency just lack of finding the right line. I made a few small adjustments before the heat and lined up 3rd, I quickly disposed of 2nd and raced around the outside of the leader to take the win in the heat. Things are looking good now, the car felt great. In the feature I started 7th and quickly made my way to the top 5, and then got clipped by a spinning car sending me hurling into the fence, tore a lot of stuff and ended my streak. Once back at the shop at 3:00am I decided to tear the car down to the frame so I could take it to the chassis shop early Monday for a few repairs and changes I wanted to make. I can’t look back on this race as a failure because the wreck was beyond my control, there wasn’t any way to miss it, and in hindsight I can’t say I would do anything differently. The car was a rocket after I figured out the problem from qualifying.

      Looking forward I have a few big races scheduled, but we will try and hit some of the local shows to get a handle on the changes I’ve made to the car since January. I will say that I’ve learned more technical things about chassis geometry in the past 6 months than I had in the previous 6 years. Some of the things I’ve taken for granted over the years I decided to address in an effort to move forward and gain more knowledge. Having the shock dyno in my shop is a godsend, along with following up on the years of documentation that I made but hadn’t really organized properly. I found small clips of notes from the past 10 years of racing in the form of weights, lengths, heights, etc. I finally took my time and organized all that information so I could read and understand it. I’ve also been reading some very technical documents trying to understand better the geometry of the car. I also can’t trade for a minute the conversations I’ve had with Sammy Swindell while traveling down the road with him while crewing on his sprint car team. That man has forgotten twice as much as I’ll know about sprint cars. The trouble I have is actually finding credible documentation about the type of cars we race and conditions we race in. Going through my notes was great because I was able to reflect on how the car actually felt to me. Every driver needs different things and a different feel. I look back and wish I would have stuck a tape recorder in front of my mouth after every race to document exactly what I felt and what I should have done to fix it. I wrote it down, but it was usually in a hurry going down the road and lacked enough detail. I’ve also had many different variations of cars over the years and I truly wish I would have documented the characteristics of the cars better. Luckily I have 3 cars in my shop, one from each major Stallard variation, 2002, 2007, and the current 2010, but small things elude me.

Special thanks to all the businesses that make this happen: Stallard Chassis, FTZ Engines, Accurate Machine Works , Keizer Wheels, Holthouse Farms, Xtreme Graphics, Fire Service Plus, ARS Shocks, Killer Coatings, Speedway Motors , Clayton’s Body Shop, Perry Farms, Senter and Son’s Gin, motorstands.com, Stren Flex , Intense Fabrication , Mettec Bolts, RaceBumpers.com, Ringers Gloves , ButlerBuilt Seats, Braille Batteries, Saldana Race Products, Conroy Pneu Control , Indico Pty Ltd , Raceseng Design , Indy Race Parts, This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it , and Aim Sports

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