February 1, 2011
By Allen Madding
As the sun set over the Turn Four grandstands at the local dirt track, I stood on top of an open race car hauler talking to a couple of my fellow competitors in the mini-stock division.
Our conversation was interrupted by the National Anthem.
We all removed our hats, put them over our hearts, and turned to face the flag pole at the center of the infield. I did a quick check of my crew a few trailers down where I saw my crew chief/car owner standing facing the flag with an air gun over his heart. I guess his work was interrupted.
We had been running the mini-stock four cylinder division with a used race car. The car was a Ford Mustang II. The front fenders and hood were white while the rest of the car was painted blue. On initial inspection, I had gathered the car had been in a hard front end collision and had the front fenders and hood replaced. But the fact that the car carried the number 2 also made me wonder if the prior owner was a Rusty Wallace fan.
In any event, the prior owner had a very basic roll cage which provided very limited safety and absolutely no chassis structure or rigidity which is sorely needed when racing unibody cars. Additionally, the prior owner had not removed the secondary sheet metal from the body of the car before installing the roll cage, so it had been severely overweight and slow. To top things off, the engine had a stock camshaft, stock lower end, and factory carburetor and intake.
Over the course of the first few months of the season, we had hulled out the body work as it should have been done prior to the roll cage installation as well as building out the roll cage to serve as an integral part of the chassis. We had begun to enjoy the fruits of our labor. The car had gone from losing a lap to the leaders in a
30-lap feature to finishing on the lead lap in the top-ten.
But this evening, we hoped for even better results.
Even on a limited budget, we had built a new engine for the “Blue Deuce”. While the new engine still had a completely stock bottom end, it now had a hydraulic roller camshaft designed for short track racing, a head that had been cut down to significantly raise the compression, and a carburetor tuned for the application. We knew that we were racing against a couple of cars that had several thousand dollars invested in their engines, but we felt we should be able to improve our finishing position with the extra horsepower.
When we checked on our draw for the heat race, we found that we were starting third. We were pleased to be starting toward the front of the field as this would give us a good opportunity to see how the car stood up to the faster cars in the division.
When the green flag flew, I quickly put some distance on the fourth place car and was setting my sights on the leaders. As they made their line into Turn One, the two leaders got together and began to slide up the embankment. I saw my opening at the bottom and made my entry into the turn deeper than normal and stayed on the accelerator longer than normal. I knew this would cause me to be a bit out of shape on exit, but I needed to get past the leaders before gravity and the embankment brought them sliding back down the track.
As I shot past the two tangled cars, I turned the car hard to the bottom and stood on the brakes. The car made its turn in and I got off the brakes to let the chassis settle. Driving in so deep set the back end leading coming out of the turn. With the car somewhat sideways, I eased back in the gas and took a higher line coming out of the turn letting the car use the wider arc to overcome the tendency to spin out and regain momentum.
As I sped down the back stretch, in the lead, I could not hear any other car near me. I checked my peripheral vision out of the side of my helmet visor and could see nothing beside me but open red clay. Through Turns Three and Four with no pressure and I led uncontested back across the line.
With two laps to go, I could hear and at times feel another car behind me. Going into the turns, I could tell another car was getting just to my quarter panel and letting off and following me through the turns. Coming out of Turn Four with the white flag waving, I could feel the other driver pushing my bumper out of the turn.
I concentrated on hitting my marks into Turn One and not overdriving the turn. Out of Turn Two and up onto the backstretch, I could tell he was still hot on my bumper. Into Turn Three, I could feel him nudging me through the turn. I kept my car in the groove and pointed where I wanted it to be. Back in the throttle I could feel him rooting me out of the groove. He slid by on the inside of the exit of the turn and we raced for the flag stand. He won the drag race back to the checkered flag and we finished second.
Despite the disappointment of not winning, I felt really good crawling out of the car having been out front for the entire heat race. All of the other mini-stock drivers with trailers lined up next to ours were standing and staring when I crawled out the driver’s windows and it was deathly quiet.
My car owner suddenly shouted out, “I just want to know one thing. How did that feel?”
I stood up on the driver’s door and screamed and beat on the roof. That was one of the best feelings I have ever experienced in a race car.
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
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