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| Average Performance- with Reason? | | |
(06/03) It has been a week (well, almost) since the AS Inc/Rasmussen Auto Supply #2 hit the track for a two-day show and, even though it's been behind the scenes, a lot has been done to figure out what happened.
THURSDAY, MAY 27 (I-80 Speedway):
Another poor draw started our night off on the wrong foot. To add to that, we drew a TOUGH heat race AND we made some ill-fated decisions in our set-up. Nonetheless, starting 7th, Jr. made a few passes to get into the 5th spot and somehow made enough points to make the main event.
In the "A," the black deuce did very little at the start. In fact, it went from the sixteenth starting spot to nineteenth in two laps- and didn't look good. Fortunately, Jr. kept digging and took advantage of some well-placed cautions to sloooowly get back into contention. When a Lap 17 yellow was thrown, Jr. was still back in 12th but was making a little ground on the group of cars ahead. Using a different entrance into Turn 3, he made his way around several cars and was up to ninth with four laps left, when the final caution was thrown. From there he got by Jack Dover (24A) and Travis Rilat (29) to capture a hard-fought 7th.
FRIDAY, MAY 28 (Junction Motor Speedway):
Coming "home" felt good and the DARE 2 Team felt good about its chances going into the race at JMS. That feeling didn't stay too long though.
While Jr. didn't start last in his heat, he was still in the third of four rows of a stacked heat. He didn't look bad, but it just didn't look fast either. Again, he made a few passes at the start but just maintained and finished fourth.
For the "A" we tried several things to give the car more speed. This night, handling wasn't our issue so we spent more time on the motor and gear. Unfortunately, it didn't make much of a difference.
Once again, the start bit Jr., he got boxed in, and was trying to play catch up the rest of the night. While the motor sounded better (and Jr. mentioned it ran better as well), he still wasn't making many moves to better his position. The car looked good, but not fast. There was a caution with (I think) five laps remaining and, just like the night before, it looked like Jr. had found a good line that might give him another strong finish. The final two laps he had a torrid battle with Jason Danley (82) and actually got by him on Lap 23, but Danley scooted by on the bottom of Turn 2 and nipped him at the line- Jr. took the 10th spot.
As I told our AS Inc. sponsor, Frank Sandall, I don't like to make excuses. When we don't perform at a certain level, we will work hard to figure out what happened and fix the problem- we're not gonna blame factors outside of our control. HOWEVER, when we did a leak-down on the motor, we found some inconsistencies that could explain why we could never get the RPM's that we were shooting for. There were some other issues that weren't right, which may have contributed to the fact that we didn't do as well.
So, we've got the wheels in motion and believe that the steps we're taking should help us down the road. God willing, we'll be ready for the ASCS National Tour Event at Eagle Raceway on Friday, June 11th. We all know that it's not gonna be an easy road, especially THIS race, but the DARE 2 Team is ready to take it on, give our best shot, and show what we've got!
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