New Egypt's Opener Recap

[NJSPEEDER]

well, at least a recap of the #99 and the #17b.
randy yaple in the 99 did pretty good for his first laps ever in a sportsman car. got a bad draw, started 17th out of 20 cars. kept it clean the whoel race and started putting together good laps towards the end. finished up 8th.
after that he went out for his consolation heat. started 12th out of 13 and finish there too. he got more bold and spun. he went to the back of the field and repassed a car to get back into 12th coming out of the last corner.
overall everything went pretty well for someone who had never truned a lap on dirt or driven a sportsman car any faster than the few mph 1st gear will carry on a gravel driveway.

ej harrington in teh 17b had a little more adventurous evening. this is ej's second season in sportsman and it is off to an interesting start. first thing that happened was that during his qualifying laps it threw the power steering belt. not a big deal normally, but under further review it was noticed that the water pump had gone bad which cause the belt to fly.
didn't bring a spare(watr pumps are not common failures) so big ed and i ran to the parts truck and grabbed the only pump they had(a really nice stewart high flow :) ) and we started going about swapping it on. he still managed to turn the 21st quickest qualifying lap out of about 70 sportsman cars before teh belt took a hike
we got that taken care of and it looked all good until about 4 laps to go in ej's heat when he suddenly lost the power steering again and looped it. he had been running in 3rd when this happened and the top 5 move on to the feature.
got the car back to the pits only to discover that the pulley spacer that we left off because it looked like things lined up with out it really did need to be there.

overall a good start to teh season. no wrecks and no major failures. just gonna scrape teh mud off and go back next weekend.

later
tim

[foff667]

haha, pretty cool.

[NJSPEEDER]

randy did get to use the bumpers a bit.
he hit one guy pretty hard in the rookie race after the guy switched lines for about the 30th time that lap.
he also put the first good dent in the right rub rail when someone he was passign tried to squeeze him. randy just held his ground and bumped the guy.

later
tim

[Ian]

are you guys cheating or playing it straight? I know I'd be cheating my ass off!

[NJSPEEDER]

the only thing that guys really cheat on that makes a difference is the motor. randy and ej don't have enough money to buy a motor like that. lol
the cars are actually very simple lay outs. all teh technology is about 20years old, teh application of that technology is really amazing though.

later
tim

[Ian]

how do they weigh the cars? do they measure right and left side weights? cause if they do, its amazing what water will do ;)

[NJSPEEDER]

they weigh the whole car at one time. and they change up when they weigh it constantly. sometime before the race, sometimes after.
where you put the weight is up to you. all they care is that you roll across teh scales at 2600lbs

later
tim

[Ian]

my teacher out at school told us that he would cheat all the time. put two holes in some of the tubing used as the frame. put water in it so it weighs the amout it's supposed to, after its weighed in the begining, let the water out. race and get all muddy, then try to be the last one over the scales at the end, cause there will be more mud on the scales and that means more weight, plus you'd have mud all over the car.

[NJSPEEDER]

must have been a while since your teacher ran. scales are digital. get zero'ed between each car. so all they are weighing is the car and the mud the car is carrying.
mud does add weight, but it isn't reliable. a dry track won't add as much weight as a wet one. also it is weight that can randomly grow or fall off during the race, that doesn't help the set up much.
there si enough open space in the technology to make a world beater car well with in the rules. the only place that people really have stuff is the motor. and like i said, they can't afford those motors yet.

later
tim

[Tru2Chevy]

Lots of fun last night, and a good night overall :)

- Justin

[ShitOnWheels]

Lots of fun last night, and a good night overall Â*:)

- Justin
cept someone forgot to call me when he got there...hmm, who could that be?

I fell asleep after banging my head on the wall (I shouldn't have slept, but no one woke me up) and didn't have time to shower, eat, and get there before I had to leave to babysit...oh well.

I could hear them racing til about 10:15. It's amazing, it's a few miles away, but I could hear it al the way here heh.

[jims69camaro]

i passed by about 2:00 in the afternoon, looked like racers were still arriving with their trailers and all. i would've hung out, but that's an awful long time to sit and do nothing until the racing started and the wife was with me, which means i would've had to have kept her entertained as well.

[NJSPEEDER]

don't worry about missing it jim, there are only 30 or so more weeks of racing. lol
genie, if you can hear the cars from you house wouldn't that be an indicator that they had started and you coudl take teh 5min drive over? lol

later
tim

[ShitOnWheels]

don't worry about missing it jim, there are only 30 or so more weeks of racing. lol
genie, if you can hear the cars from you house wouldn't that be an indicator that they had started and you coudl take teh 5min drive over? lol

later
tim
Erm, yeah, cept I fell asleep for 2.5 hours...I mean knocked out after hitting my head on the wall falling down the stairs. And I didn't actually hear them til I got home from babysitting at 9 or so. During the day it's slightly noisier around here than at nite ;)

[NJSPEEDER]

i was jsut talking to randy and he linked me to a site that has all of teh lap data from his transponder. turns out he turned the 3rd quickest lap of the rookie feature.
he is heading to the billy pauch racing school tomorrow. hopefully he will pick up enough tips and seat tiem to threaten for a win soon.

later
tim

[Tru2Chevy]

i was jsut talking to randy and he linked me to a site that has all of teh lap data from his transponder. turns out he turned the 3rd quickest lap of the rookie feature.
he is heading to the billy pauch racing school tomorrow. hopefully he will pick up enough tips and seat tiem to threaten for a win soon.

later
tim

Linky?

- Justin

[NJSPEEDER]

http://mylaps.com/results/showevent.jsp?id=64841

these are the results for every lap run all evening. randy yaple was in the rookie feature and ej harrington is listed under qualifying and consi 1 in sportsman.

later
tim