Time for my annual outing for the year! Last two seasons I did three USPKS races total, and that was the extent of my actual racing outside of hotlapping and coaching. This year I didn’t want to travel, so national stuff was off the table. Fortunately the very competitive regional Route 66 Sprint Series was visiting Dousman this year, just an hour down the road from my house, so I saved up my pennies to race that one event.
I’ll be running the KA100 Senior class on a 3-year old Exprit (for those of you who say karts need to be replaced every half-season).
Prepped the kart this week, including new brake pads, new chain, engine rebuild (seized it last time I was out practicing) fresh sticker kit, and some odds and ends that needed cleaning and fixing.
The steed is basically ready! Just need to collect my engine tomorrow from Innovative/Franklin Motorsports and we are good to go. Practice is at 3:04pm for us tomorrow so got a long morning to finalize everything.
Gotta say, I think this is my best sticker kit install ever. Not saying much, usually I botch it heavily. But this one only has several waves and bubbles in it.
I’ll try to keep this updated throughout the weekend. Hoping to keep posting on how it’s going, what chassis setup things I’m looking at, what the data squiggles are telling me etc.
Expectations:
Would be lying if I said I wasn’t expecting anything. It’s my home track, I’ve been out here almost every weekend coaching and pounding practice laps, my setup feels dialed, and I think my driving is sharp as it’s been the last few years. In a pretty stacked field, I think a top 5 is definitely possible, but it depends. Dousman can race kinda rough so anything can happen.
at the pro level, can we still be a threat in our 30s? Or is the physicality of it such that you can’t beat young men in prime?
I’d imagine we can still be upfront but I’m just guessing. Bonanno would frequently win senior iirc but that’s club. I dont know how he fared in skusa/uspks fields.
Good luck, have fun, but also kick a great deal of butt.
Every driver is different but certainly 30+ drivers can still hang in senior. I don’t think I’ve lost much in the past few years. But definitely saw my level change since my mid-20s. Not necessarily worse, just certain skills improved while others degraded.
Fernando Alonso is still one of the greatest in the world at 42.
I’m imagining TJ loading up some sort of JDM vehicle and toodling off to the track right about now. Drive well, be safe, and maybe come home with a trophy.
All JDM cars are gone so we are doing the opposite… my dad is taking our little trailer down with his diesel pick up, very USDM!
Excited to have my dad on the wrenches again. It’s been a few years since we worked together as he was always working for the series or announcing. Used to be just us so it’ll be nice to team up again. Also nice to have someone else to wrestle tires onto those damn AMV wheels!
First session, was about 8th or 9th fastest. Kart was too oversteery on new tires (I haven’t run new tires since September of last year) and our carb was set rich with the fresh engine. Going to drop tire pressure, dial the carb in and keep everything else the same to see how it behaves on heat cycled tires.
Pretty calm these days before a race, try not to stress it too much. Once I started focusing on fun more than results, that came naturally. But in general the whole process is fairly normal to me these days. Interestingly this is the first event I’m racing after I got my Zoloft prescription this year so curious if my anxiety will be noticeably different.
