Championship Series #9

In quarter midget racing you start in the rookie classes. The classes are listed by the color of the plate that corresponds to a hole diameter that restricts the air going in your engine. The smaller the hole size, the slower the car will go. You have heard me talk about the "red" plate. The second step in Rookie Classification is the "blue" plate. Today was our first race with this plate. We have practiced it multiple times and I have worked on my line, but with other cars out there it is so much different.

As a reference point we were running ~7.8 second laps. Just putting the larger hole "blue" plate picked up our speed to 6.8 seconds per lap. Most of the fastest cars pick up between 1 and 1.2 seconds on a 8 second lap that is huge!!! This is the largest lap time decrease you will get in your quarter midget career just from a plate change.

Today we had heat races. I started 4th and after a nice pass was sitting comfortably in 3rd. I came up on a lap car with 1 to go and I miss judged my closing speed. They were slower and late in the corner I tried to make a pass. We are told to save our passes for exit but I am still learning. I got nervous and didn't want to damage either of our cars, so I quickly cut the wheel and went to the infield. I have to shut the car down when I go in the infield. Once that happened they put out the caution and I didn't have any time to make up any positions. I was gutted after this race. I was crying and my dad and some of the other parents tried to cheer me up. They said I did really well but I really wanted to make up those positions.