Main Event Series Race #2 – More Gremlins

admin — Mon, 25 May 2009 03:46:14 +0000

We arrived at Midvale Speedway in time for three hours of practice Friday night, May 22. Drew got on the track and within 8 laps he was running lap speeds that would put us in the sixth qualifying position and after the invert Saturday that would have been good enough to be on the pole for the Main Event Racing Series Feature! But, it was not to be as on lap 15 of that first test run the rear end broke. After investigating we found the spool to be broke around the ring gear and the ring gear itself broke. NOT an easy fix. We called all over heck and finally got hold of Scott Baker of Baker Performance who said he had parts and would get us in for repairs at 8:00 am Saturday morning. We proceeded to drive the hour north to Scotts shop and stayed there for the night. Scott had all the parts needed and by 3:00 pm we were out the door of his shop and on our way to the track. The big problem now was hot laps started at 2:30 pm so we were already behind the eight ball. We unloaded the car immediately upon arriving at the track and got in two short sessions of hot laps. The track was very slick as it had heated up in the 90 degree sun. We were good and if new tires gave us .2 to .3 second more we would be ok. We still had to get tires from Hoosier and only had 45 minutes till qualifying. The tires had been well picked over by this time so we got what we thought would give us close to the right stagger. Again, not to be, the rear stagger was short ¾”. Back to the Hoosier truck to exchange tires to the biggest right and smallest left ones we could find to get the most stagger we could. We only gained 1/8” which was not nearly enough. We were out of time and went out to qualify. The car had a bad push relegating us to a 19th qualifying position out of 26 cars, now Drew and team had their work cut out for them to figure out what to do to make the car fast and free.

Come race time we still could not get stagger, these tires would not stretch, so we took out some cross and raised the track bar one turn to free up the car center out. Drew went out for the feature not knowing what he was going to get under him for a setup for sure. The car was very loose!! Drew did a heck of a job avoiding wrecks and moving up to the front. He even put a Midvale stripe down the front stretch wall, his very first brush with the wall with this kind of race car. No damage was visible and he said the car was actually better. The car was over heating some at this point, a problem we have had and tried to remedy every time we had a chance to put enough laps on the car to get it to do it. He continued his move to the front but after several yellows and 27 green laps into the race the car was over heating too much and he was forced to pull in. At this point Drew was in 8th place and still on the move, considerably faster than several of the cars in front of him.

The next few days we took the motor to Rhyne Competition Engines for a check up only to find that there was no heating problem there and the engine was in as good a condition as it was in at the start of the season. We deemed the overheating problem to not enough radiator capacity. We had put the radiator/oil cooler in the car that Port City recommended but most racers are running motors in the 600 hp range, not ARCA engines with 770 hp. So, this week we are putting an ARCA radiator in the car with a separate oil cooler. We also found something on the setup that we had overlooked which should get the car to work better in the corners. We will also cut about 100 hp from the engine this week by switching to a 390 carb.

Wish us luck as we head to the very small challenging Kil-Kare Speedway this Friday June 5th and then on to the special $10,000 to win race at Angola Speedway on Thursday June 11th. We are very excited about this race as Drew was on the pole and ran right up front the last and only time we had been there.

A special thanks to Aluma Trailers for the great trailer that gets us to and from the track, Elmer Schaeffer & Amsoil for the super lubricants, Impact Safety Equipment for great safety equipment, and Scott Baker at Baker Performance for getting us up and running again Saturday morning.

The Aluma Trailers, Amsoil, Impact Racing, Dodge Charger #21 Outlaw Late Model Team

P.S. Drew got his first fan mail from a young race fan in New Jersey requesting an autographed picture. Thanks to all you race fans out there!!

Drew Charlson Racing » race number 2

Main Event Series Race #2 – More Gremlins