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Frank Youtzy is a crew chief for a local Sportsman team at Five Flags Speedway, in Pensacola Florida. He will give us a birds-eye view of what it's like to race at the grassroots level. He will also field questions from the readers concerning weekly local racing.
March 26, 2009
By Frank Youtzy
It is so good to be back into the groove!
No major problems and we all had fun this past Friday. Well, there were some wrecks, so I guess not everybody had fun.
Our four person team all showed up on time, practice went decent except for ‘funky tire temperatures’, and the car was handling great after loosening it up at my magic shop. No real magic is put into the car, but unless asked for technical aspects I’ll just say that the weight percentages were adjusted to better our lap times.
We bolted on four new tires and came from a 5th place start to 2nd place finish in six laps of our qualifying heat race and were running down the leader before we ran out of laps.
Our features are 20 laps. We started 3rd, fell back to last place on the first lap due to a Lap-One ‘oops’ by (name removed to protect the idiot). Total restart minus the two that wrecked out and away we go again! Passing cars on the inside uses tires here bad, so we went to the outside and the car was following the drivers inputs flawlessly. The problem was, we used up a lot of tires getting back to the third spot.
Now, finishing where you started is usually a flat draw in my book, but seeing the crowd respond to the action on the track for the season opener race was really cool.
12 laps in and the tires were about junk. We burnt up the right front really bad, reference the ‘funky tire temps.’ above. Seems that the right front camber gain is whacked out and obviously not working right. Finishing second means there is work to do on the car anyway, but after the changes in the off season it was expected. The 2nd place car had mechanical failure and put us in the point of digging every last bit of traction we had left to just hang on.
All in all, it was a great effort by the team. We only have 15 more races to go to hold on to our 2nd place points position. Maybe work it out to First place in the points for the end of the year? Maybe, maybe not. Hey “that’s racing” and we wouldn’t spend the time and monies if we didn’t have the competitive nature and resources to do it.
In case any of you were wondering about the differences from local racing to the Cup level, let me break it down for you:
- Ticket prices are $10.00 here, $110.00 Bristol (each!)
- Entry fees, $25.00 per person here, Bristol = much higher
- Same length really, .4-mile track here at Five Flags Speedway, .533-miles for Bristol.
- Side by side racing for 3.5 hours, pretty much same.
- Can you go from the back to the front? At least to second place, as demonstrated by my driver Jim Pokrant and Denny Hamlin.
- Breaking track records in qualifying? Yes on both.
There are a lot of other similarities and disparities, but heck if you can’t afford the trips to the major sanctioning body races this year, please don’t forget about us local racers. All in all, I think we put on a better short track show in every one of our local divisions, than this weekend at Bristol as seen from the television coverage anyway. That doesn’t mean I am not planning on trying to make a NASCAR sanctioned race this year, just means that if You can’t make it to one, check out your local track. The speeds are not as fast, but the competition on the track is just as intense.
I encourage you to enjoy your local track just as much as going to any race. You never know that the 15/16 year old kid in the late model division may just make the show one day and you can say; “Hey kid, nice job today”, when you see him at a NASCAR event down the road.
We have a 17 year old ‘girl’/young lady tearing up our pro-late model division here, and she is holding her own at the bigger races she’s been to also.
For our team, we just try to stay focused on what we are doing and having fun!
I’ll try to post a bit earlier in the future. Until next time, please let me know what you think and how to make this portion of your insider experience batter.
Thanks and take care.
Comments or suggestions are encouraged. Please contact Frank Youtzy at Insider Racing News.
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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