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den 1 juli 2003
What a roller coaster ride!
Dear friends,
What a roller coaster ride I was on in Richmond, Virginia!
First, on Thursday night, we played with the band on Brown’s Island down town.
It was about 90 degrees hot and very humid but still there were about 8.000 people. I would like to say they were all there for us but that probably would be an overstatement, since we opened for the popular band 3 Doors Down.
Still, we had a lot of fun and musically I think it was the best performance we’ve done so far. The crowd seemed to liked as well which always is a plus.
Although the majority of the crowd was a little too young to recognize a lot of the songs we play, I can guarantee you that we shocked some of them with our last number.
Since Bryan Herta has taken over from Dario Franchitti for the rest of the year he is back with the band and helped finished the show off with the Sex Pistiols song “Anarchy in the U.K.” This may be the only song he knows but he knows it well and half the crowd was really into it while the other half looked like they were wondering what the heck was going on….
Out next appearance with the band will be in Nashville. That show will be recorded and put on CD.
On Friday it was time to start getting serious and to do what we came to do, racing!
This track is the smallest one we race on and the smallest one I’ve ever driven on. It’s only 0.75 miles long and beforehand I was kind of concerned, since there’s no room for error in dog fights between cars but the race went without much incidents at all and the track was actually extremely fun to drive on since it allows you to slide the car around a lot more than on a big 220 mph plus track.
We had a good first practice, 3rd in our group and 5th overall. The surprise came in the second session when all of a sudden nearly everybody went a lot faster, except us. When all was said and done we were 15th fast and without any more practice time before qualifying that’s where we ended up qualifying. Not one of our greatest moments let me tell you. What was so strange about it was that we unloaded fast and then got left behind to such a degree. Anyway the team engineers did a good job of rebounding because they changed the set up and the car was pretty good. We ended that session 4th fastest but most importantly the car felt quite balanced.
Then the whole Saturday we didn’t do much since the night races are scheduled that way. You kind of sleep in, hang around the hotel, have lunch and then in the late afternoon go out to the track. Then suddenly about 4.30 p.m. everything happens at once, drivers meeting, sponsor appearances and media interviews etc. At 8 p.m. the race starts and it’s time to once again get serious. The first thing that happened was that due to a radio problem we only had one-way radio communication. This could potentially be a big problem but since we have a reserve system in place, based on hand signals, it really did not affect us at all. Thumbs up means good, thumbs down means bad and so on. The car was truly awesome in the start, we passed a lot of cars to settle in 8th position after 3 laps and then we gained another spot before the first pit stop.
For the first time this year on the short ovals the car allowed us to drive the way I usually drive, aggressively and it was a lot of fun.
Then in the first pit stop came the moment where I got use for the third hand signal we use, the one where the middle finger is used which means thanks for not putting the wheel on properly J
Jokes aside, we had a hick up as the car slid when it was up on the jacks which resulted in the left rear tire did not get put on properly. It took about ½ a lap and then it fell off the car and we limped back to the pits on 3 wheels. Luckily it was still under caution so we did not lose a lap but it cost as every position we had gained from the start of the race. It was a shame since we would have been in 4th position instead of 14th but as soon as the green flag was displayed we started to move forward again. The only one that I think was better than us in traffic was Sam Hornish, who I raced for a long time, but he could go high and keep more speed up there than we could so we lost out to him. On lap 200 (of 250) it went yellow for rain, which was very fortunate for us because the right front tire lost pressure at about the same moment. It turned out we picked up some debris from a previous crash. Then we had even more luck since the rain started to come down hard and the race ended so we did not have to pit and change tire, we just ran with the puncture those last few laps under yellow and that was that.
Like I said in the beginning, it was a real roller coaster weekend, a lot of highs and a lot of lows. We took home a 7th place finish, which in itself is not great, but at least we moved up one position in the championship. We are still, believe it or not in the hunt but we got to still get a little bit faster.
The next race is in Kansas City this weekend. That’s a 1.5 mile track similar to Texas so expect close racing!
We have been there testing so I hope we will have a decent car and for once not only luck to prevent us being last but luck that help us finish up front!
All the best,
Kenny
kennybrack.com
KB
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