September 8-9, 2000

Friday, September 8, 2000

Came in early today so Gregg and Lloyd could finish putting the car back together from last weekend.  Lloyd worked on the car during the week to fix the housing, which had been damaged and welding work was done.  The rear end of the car was fixed, a new bumper put in to replace the bent up one, a new left rear fender was attached, the left rear body work was taped together, and the spare tire put on the right rear.  That only took all morning (about 5 hours) and they were done at 2:00, just in time for a quick lunch then head to the track for test and tune night.

In the afternoon, while waiting to get to the track, I spoke for a while to young Justin Johnson, driver of Bandolero car #8.  He told me last Saturday night was a great race, but unfortunately, the Redding, CA driver of car #21 crashed as he was running 4-wide around the track with Kyle Busch, Jason Allen and Spencer Clark (I think).  He did a bit of quick fixing on his car, and returned to the track to finish the Saturday main, but unfortunately not a contender for the fast guys.

Part of the program this evening was another demo run of the Thunder Roadster driven by Sonny Wahl.  Pretty exciting!

Again pitted next to Ken Kulikowski (#9) and John Chaffin (#77).  Spoke to John’s wife, Patricia, who said her two daughters (who have been coming to the races pretty regularly) want to race Bandoleros.  She’s trying to hold them off as much as she can.  As she said, she’s apprehensive enough watching John race that she’s not ready to watch her daughters race as well.  The minimum age for Bandolero drivers is 8.

There were two races again this evening.  There was one caution in Race 1 and two cautions in Race 2.  Gregg stayed out of trouble, although there were a lot of near misses.  He held his own and finished both races.  John Chaffin and Gregg were really going at it in Race 2; they were racing hard and Gregg finished ahead of John.

Race 2, Kyle Busch (#4) got together with Jason Allen (#71) during the warmup lap and messed up his car.  Kyle was unable to race and Jason ended up missing the first couple of laps.

Gregg and Lloyd only made one change this evening with the car.  They increased air pressure once as he was running really loose in the first session of practice due to the fixes they made on the rear end and having to use the spare tire for the right rear.  The tire had to be scruffed up before they could set the right air pressure.

Saturday, September 9, 2000

Ken Kulikowski’s camshaft broke during the first session of practice after he worked on his car for six hours that morning.  He was able to purchase a new one at the 600 Racing trailer and frantically worked on replacing the broken one.  (I got to watch how it's all put together -- cool!)  He made it for the main race but unfortunately was not running up front with the fast guys, as he usually does.

Gregg came up in 4^th place out of 7 cars in his heat race.  Unfortunately for the main race, he was placed at the end of the lineup.  I questioned the lineup official.  He told me that he obtains his instructions from the command post and that’s where they put Gregg.  Gregg sent out an e-mail to the track official once we got home and we learned yet another INEX rule we were not aware of.  David Stetzer, LVMS track manager, quickly responded:  If you miss two consecutive races, it does not matter how well you do on your heat race, you go to the end of the line for your main.  As you know, Gregg missed the last three Saturday races.  Unfortunately, having this mishap threw off Gregg’s concentration and he just could not get his rhythm back.  He finished 21^st out of 23 cars.  Another learning experience.  [I gotta read that INEX rule book.]

Two more races to go!