Lakeport Speedway
5-31-08
Photos
by Lance
Keith and I did not attend the Memorial Day festivities at Ukiah
Speedway and instead elected to take the extra week off to try some new chassis setup
ideas. I bought a few new springs that more
closely match a setup recommended by some Legend chassis guru’s on the east coast. I did my best to set the car up as recommended but
went with the setup they feel is best for a flat track.
It uses very heavy springing up front and I wanted to see what would happen
at Lakeport if we tried that first. I knew I
could always soften up the front springs if necessary and do it fairly quickly if need be.
Keith went out for the first set of hot laps and began bringing
the car up to speed a little at a time so as not to be surprised if the thing started to
mishandle. We need not have worried about
that apparently. After just a few laps he was
singing the car around the racetrack at speeds and lap times that matched some of our best
ever at Lakeport. When he brought the car in
his only complaint was that the car was just a little loose (rear tires sliding) in the
center and off the turns. But he didn’t
want much change because he was pretty excited about how good the car felt to him. I decided to just go with some minor air pressure
adjustments.
In the second set of hot laps he showed just how much he
trusted the car by pulling two-tenths of a second off his previous best lap. He was staying with or reeling in some of the
faster cars at various points on the track. Wow!!!! I don’t know about Keith, but I was super
excited to see what he could do in a race with this setup.
We decided to pretty much leave the car alone and just give it a try in the
heat race, although as expected the fast kids had also gotten faster in the second set. Oh well, just think if we hadn’t improved our
speed as well.
In qualifying Keith whistled the #8 around the track in 14.214
seconds to place himself 8th fastest of the 15 cars in attendance. To try and get ourselves back to a center of the
field competitive level was our original goal for this race. Mission Accomplished!!! (As some guy named Bush
once said.) This performance also earned
Keith back-to-back pole starting positions. (Both
the 2nd heat and in the Main Event.) DOH!!!
(As some guy named Simpson says all the time!!) This
could be a really exciting evening of racing for the T & C Motorsports Racing #8 team.
The first heat saw the #14 car of Phillip Morrisey pretty much
dominate the field, with the exception of Jack Humphrey’s in the #49. Jack has been fighting health problems
recently and had been hospitalized for a few weeks.
I know he raced at Ukiah for the first time last week in the Clement Racing
#09. This week he and his #49 (complete with
new engine) seemed to be getting faster each time he got on the track. The only problem with his car was that it kept
getting loose at the most inopportune times. Jack had to recover from one of those spins
in his heat race to come back for a 2nd place finish. It was fun to watch him charge through the pack. Morrisey in the #14 usually has a fast car but was
new to the Lakeport track. Keith chased him
down during hot laps and out qualified him but we both knew the #14 would continue to get
faster as they got his car dialed in.
Now it was time for Keith to face off with the fastest 7 cars while
coming from the pole position. He has been
looking forward to this kind of opportunity for quite some time. His experience from a couple of weeks back dueling
with cousin Fred at Ukiah has him pretty confident that he can get the jump on David
Winchel in the #33x car. At the drop of the
green Keith executes the same type of start that got him ahead of Fred and it works well
enough to keep him right alongside Winchel for the first two turns. Winchel is a veteran and knows the Lakeport track
very well and has been a Main Event winner there also.
He uses his knowledge and Keith’s unwillingness to risk damaging his
fast ride just to win a heat race, by dive bombing down in front of the #8 going into turn
3. It is a smart move by Keith to back off
just a bit because had he stayed on the inside of the 33x there would have been contact
and probably ended our evening much too early. As
it is Keith soldiers on in 2nd place and is not really receiving any serious
challenge to that spot for the first few laps. Eventually
he has both the #56 of Dylan Albiani and the #5 of young phenom driver Robbie Czub right
on his rear bumper. To exacerbate the problem
Keith has been getting hosed by oil leaking from the #33x car just ahead of him. It all comes to a head going into the very fast
turn 3 as Keith does a very sudden piroutte spin right in front of the two cars pressing
him from behind. Amazingly Keith stands on
the throttle and hangs at the bottom of the track just long enough to allow those two cars
to squeeze by, one to the inside and one to the outside, and then slides up the banking. He just misses collecting the #35 of Matt Scott
near the top of the track and ends up getting just the lightest of taps from the spinning
#21 car of Jessica Walker. Unbelievably
everyone is able to continue with Keith now bringing up the rear. I guess it pays to have the very best drivers
around you when things go so wildly wrong. For
the remainder of the race Keith managed to keep in pretty close contact with the rest of
the cars with only the #35 dropping back behind him in the closing laps. On the final corner of the final lap Robbie Czub
in the #5 pushed his car to the lead on the outside of Winchel in the #33x to win it. That was very cool and fun to watch.
This whole scenario of Keith being on the pole and Winchel to
his outside played out again at the beginning of the Main Event. This time though Keith had decided to press the
point a bit more in his quest to lead the race. At
the drop of the green flag Keith set sail and actually pulled a bit of lead on Winchel for
a couple of turns but Winchel lead once again at the end of the first lap. Keith got a reprieve when the #49 of
Humphrey’s spun during the opening lap. Once
again the #8 lined up in the pole position and the duel was on again. Keith held tough clear till turn 3 once again but
just could not hold with the #33x. He got a
bit high coming down the front stretch and that allowed the freight train of cars behind
him to get to his inside. He dropped into the
eighth spot but was almost immediately hit from behind going into turn #1 by the #13 car
of David Fisher which knocked him back up the track and that allowed the #13 to squirt by. The #14 of Phillip Morrisey (remember that guy?)
had jumped by him also. So now he found
himself chasing a really fast pack of cars and doing a very respectable job of it. When the #14 experienced some sort of problem and
dropped out of the race we were up to the 8th spot but Keith got held up a bit
when the #14 slowed in front of him. I
thought that was probably where we would finish unless something strange happened. Well, guess what, it did.
As the pack of cars just ahead of him pulled away a little at a
time Keith pressed his car harder and harder. Well,
as can be the case sometime, he pushed to hard coming off of turn #4 and did a long lazy
spin to the infield. He righted the car and
got going again fairly quickly but caught a break when the flagman threw a yellow for him. So here we are at the back of the Main Event with
more than 20 laps gone in a 30 lap race. Keith
got back up on the wheel once the green flag flew and began picking off cars as fast as he
could. After a few laps he got another break
when the yellow flag came out for the #33 car of Eddie Braun who had been spun around by
Jack in the #49. Now Keith will be starting
almost back up to where he was when he spun himself out.
With the #8 in the ninth position just behind Jack’s #49 the green came
out once again. Unfortunately the #49
got a terrible start and Keith nearly ran him over coming for the green. Luckily Jack got his car back up to full song
fairly quickly and both he and Keith got by the #25 car of
Greg Baxter to put them 7th and 8th respectively. This chase went on for a lap or two with Keith
pressing Jack really hard. That is when the
racin’ gods intervened once again. Apparently
the #33x of David Winchel and the #96 of Micah Parmer tangled between turns 3 and 4
sliding up the banking in front of Keith and Jack. Jack
jumped on the brakes too hard and spun himself out. As
Jack slipped up the track Keith found himself with no place to go. He braked hard but hit either oil or loose rubber
and was unable to keep from hitting the #96. Minus
the left front fender and now sporting front wheels no longer pointing in the same
direction he pulled away from the scene of the wreck.
Realizing he had big problems Keith brought the #8 into the pits. I did my best to try and effect some sort of
repair but there was nothing I could do in the short time I knew we would have. The race restarted without us with only a couple
of laps remaining. As it turned out the race
would end under a checkered yellow a half lap later when Jack tangled with the #33 of
Eddie Braun and the #25 of Greg Baxter. The
final positions showed Matt Scott in the #35 as the winner with Dylan Albiani second,
Robbie Czub in third and our young lady racer, Jammin’ Jessica Walker, in her #21
finishing fourth. You go girl!!! (remainder of the finish was #13, #25, #33, #49,
#33x, #96, #8, #47 Kenny Chrome, #20 Joe Leduc, #5 Robert Kuebler and #14.)
Keith ended up in the 11th finishing spot when the
dust had settled. All in all it was a good
evening of racing for our #8 team. We had
improved our performance level at this tough little track from previous visits there and
we were competitive enough to be in the mix with some of the fastest cars on the track. Unfortunately our results really did not reflect
how well we really were running, but then that happens many times in racing. Just ask the big boys of NASCAR, fast sometimes
just isn’t enough. You still need a
little bit of that racin’ luck!!!
Next stop – MADERA!!!
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