Speaking of IMSA, you’ll be at the M-O weekend?
Yep, I’ll be there on the Cup side this weekend.
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Sounds familiar to our outing at Battle at the Brickyard. First practice session, my daughter misjudges the hairpin, goes on top of another kart, comes down and knocks the tire off the bead and messes up the screw hole. She also tweaked the chassis, which we find out in the next session when she says the kart pulls to the left.
I make some adjustments to the steering to attempt to get her through the weekend. Saturday morning warm-up a guy loses it in front of her on lap 2, and she destroyed the right front of her karts, bent tie rod, spindle, spindle stem, steering column, kingpin. I go by the Comet tent, the only part they have is a steering column for our Birel. Go by one of the teams running CompKarts, he doesn’t have the parts but finds someone that does. That guy loans me the spindle (which later was just the stem since our kingpin bearings are different sizes) and tie rod.
We miss the heat race, but get on the grid for the pre-final, and her chassis is tweaked even more now, then right front tire won’t touch the ground. Thankfully Parazhino was there and straightened our chassis. She decided to skip Sunday warm-up so she could run the final, since all the first runs of the day ended with contact. Well, in the final, about 2/3s of the way through, she is getting passed, and the kid decides to try to squeeze through where there is no longer any room. He spins her out and sends backwards into the tire barrier at 45 mph, and brought out the red flag.
She was knocked out for a few seconds and got a ride to the infield care center, and then the hospital. The kid who spun her was pitting right behind us, and when I got to our trailer, they were there and packing up and left. They never said sorry or asked how she was, which upset her.
However, I cannot be upset because going to the hospital was a blessing in disguise, as we found out that she was in diabetic ketoacidosis, and has Type 1 Diabetes, which was undiagnosed until then.
I’m sorry to hear it was so rough. That must have been hard on her and difficult to be unable to fix as a Dad. That they caught the health issue, which sounds quite serious, is indeed a blessing.
Hard part was only one parent was allowed in the hospital with her, so mom was there while I got to stay in the trailer waiting.
She’s already been back racing and has said that we are going back to the Brickyard next year since she has un-finished business there.
And as far as her diabetes, doctors said one more week and she could have been passed out on the floor, so definitely a major blessing in disguise. She’s taken it like a trooper and is taking her insulin as she is supposed to.
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Man that’s a tough weekend. Glad she’s ok though
It’s not difficult to say sorry I fckd up, at first it’s hard to pluck up the courage but after you’ve done it once and seen how it diffusés a LOT of any bad feeling that may exist, it’s easy. Some folks never pluck up the courage to do the right thing, or just don’t care which is worse than what they did on track.
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She’s a tough one! I love that she sees the opportunity to come back and try again.
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Absolutely, shell go far with that kind of never give up attitude
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One of the people I got along with best in SCCA started with me first saying sorry, I messed up. One of the best things I remember seeing years was a parent calmly telling his young son he knows he did not mean to do it, but he still needed to apologize to another young driver. It really makes a big difference
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Yeah, especially since they were near me and saw me when I came back from the infield care center. Of course, someone told me that it’s possible they were too ashamed that it happened to say anything, or that they didn’t feel they had any fault in it. Whether you have fault or not, knowing she was taken off in the ambulance, they could have asked how was she. However, I can’t be mad because it caught something much worse.
Once she came back to and had comprehension, which was the next morning, I asked her if we were done karting, and she very strongly said “No way!” She is head strong and always wants what she wants.
And I do appreciate everyone’s words of support.
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I commend your level head. As a parent, I might have been a little more reactionary in the same situation. Especially being pitted so close. I can only guess they were not knocked out of the race in the incident?
Blessing in disguise. Diabetic shock is no joke and flying around a race track when it happens can be a serious hazard. Both to the ill and their competitors. A buddy of mine’s son had a friend that developed type 1 and didn’t know it. One day the kid just fell out while riding their bikes. The crash wasn’t severe thankfully, but the kid had gone into shock, was unconscious. His wife had to call the paramedics. Found out in the hospital later on it was from the diabetes, similarly previously undiagnosed. Glad to hear her spirit is not broken by the string of events! I can only hope my daughter will display similar resolve when she faces hardships in racing and in life.
If you were not ashamed, embarrassed, or in general just felt like an idiot it would be easy to go say I am sorry. We are going to make dumb mistakes. They do not teach this stuff in driver’s ed. The only place we can learn it is side by side with someone else in a corner driving as hard as we can. Once you do something dumb, do two things. Apologize to whoever your bad decision affected. Then try and learn from it.
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Solid official practice yesterday, this time last year same track same config, new kart new license, best I could do was 2 seconds off masters pole. Yesterday, 0.3 off that pole time, happy with that.
Let’s see what today brings
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That’s a nice improvement. Fighting in the front pack will be fun. How does points etc work in your league? Do you have a yearlong thing or is it broken up into mini seasons like my rental races?
He spun around and got going again. However, the race was red flagged and ended at that point.
Definitely agree. The doctors were surprised that she was not in pain or feeling sick or anything. Her numbers were so high that they said most with those numbers are either vomiting, or passed out. They said another week, and she would have hit the floor passed out.
I agree, whether it was their fault or not, they were part of a crash. I was lucky enough, if you call it that, to be up in the grandstands and saw the entire thing develop and happen. He had time to go around on the other side of her. Every time out is a learning experience.
It’s basically a winter series, too damn hot through summer. P1 gets x number of points, which reduces each position after. Bonus points for completing all 7 rounds, final round double points.
Race prep was on point
Heat P3. PF P3 side swiped the tyres then nursed a slightly bent axle through last third and final. The chap who finished P1 DNFD the final (mechanical flag - bumper dropped). Held out my bent axle to the end to take P2. It was only vibrating at slow speed, so I tried to not do that 
Awesome weekend, soooooo much improvement from a year ago I still can’t quite fathom. Seat time, that’s all I can say.
Hey congrats! Glad the axle didn’t prevent a podium. Do you have a rabbit to chase or is the gang pretty equal?
Pretty equal, it slowed me down a little, I was in front of another guy I haven’t raced against for the first half of the final, he was getting up alongside me a few times, sensible head came out and I let him by, not knowing him I dunno if he’s gonna do a dive bomb and take us both out, if I didn’t have a wobbly wheel I’d of held on I think, happy with a P2 to open my account though. Oh and I was concentrating on getting under the rubber 
Love the Komet K2s 
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