« Back
den 23 juli 2003
And the rock continues
Dear friends,
Nashville was truly an experience, from a lot of perspectives.
Since its only 6 hours drive from Columbus we decided to drive there. In Kentucky my wife Anita took over the driving duties and as it was pretty warm in the car I took my pants off, folded the front seat down and fell asleep.
I was sleeping deep when I had a pretty dramatic wake up when she got stopped for speeding.
Desperately I tried to get my jeans back on but drowsy from sleep I fumbled and did not get the job done. Furthermore the cop, for some unknown reason, decided to walk up to the passenger side where he knocked on the window. I opened it up with my jeans not much further up than my thighs. To say the least he had a pretty surprised look on his face and I decided it was no use to try to explain anything. I am sure he thought we were up to something else than we actually were, and perhaps he found it amusing for after telling us the traffic rules in the state of Kentucky he let us go with a warning.
I guess sometimes it can be of advantage to get caught with the pants down…
We made it to Nashville town without further excitement.
The Nashville 1.3 mile long Superspeedway provided some pretty exciting racing. The circuit is very slippery on the top side and looking at previous years racing it had not been that much side by side racing. It was quite slippery there now too, but despite this there was quite a lot of side by side racing so the race was pretty exciting from a spectator standpoint.
Since the tracks surface is made out of concrete the track is quite different.
Amongst things it provides more grip but is also rougher. Of course a racecar is never comfortable but when running on a track like this you have to spend a little more time tuning the shocks and springs to keep your teeth from falling out.
From our perspective the weekend was both up and down for us. We had a few issues dealing with a new track once again but I think we did fair, finally managing to qualify 9th as the third best Honda car.
In the beginning of the race we also had some grip problems but the biggest issue came when we failed to put on the left front wheel properly in one of the pit stops. We came out in 6th place but had to pit again to put another wheel on and that dropped us to 17th. The car however was quite good from middle of the race and on and together with a good pit strategy we managed to fight our way back up to finally finish 6th after passing Thomas Scheckter on the grass when hitting traffic with only a few laps to go.
The result kept us in the championship hunt and we also managed to close the gap a little to the leaders, still sitting in 5th place in the championship.
We now are past the midway season and have 7 races to go and we realize we have a lot of work in front of us to get more competitive.
We are doing everything we can to understand the car and this kind of racing better, having increased our testing program over the next couple of weeks.
This means my scheduled trip back to Sweden in the end of the month had to be postponed, something I gladly do for a chance of better on track performance.
Let’s hope the testing pays off and we can give the others a run for their money in the upcoming races.
Next stop is Michigan Superspeedway. That’s a track I’ve run very competitively on in the past with Team Rahal, leading both CART races in 2000 and 2001. Unfortunately we have yet to take the car to the finish line due to on track incidents but I am hoping it will be “third time lucky” for us.
This race will also be exciting from another standpoint. GM is launching its new engine with Sam Hornish Jr. In one way it is unfortunate since Hornish is already a strong competitor and most probably will be even stronger now. But the most interesting thing about it is that GM has employed Ford-owned Cosworth Engineering to build their new engine. Talk about conflict of interests!
Apart from racing it was my first time to the Country & Westerns Capital of the world. Through my music interest I had the opportunity to see it first hand. First we had band rehearsal on Thursday night at a studio down town and it was top notch to say the least. Then we did our rock show at the track on Saturday, which was very well attended. We had the pleasure to be joined by Ed King who’s a legendary guitar player that was part of the Lynyrd Skynyrd band in the Seventies and who also wrote the famous song “Sweet Home Alabama”.
It was a true experience to perform with him and you will be able to hear it on our CD that will be released as a benefit for charity in the middle of August. Do I have to mention I also took the opportunity to check out some of his riffs too…
On Sunday, after the race, we went to the NAMM show, which is on of the biggest music trade shows in USA. There I met up with Gibson who will endorse the band with some products. That’s exiting as they make some of the best rock and roll guitars.
Now I am back in Columbus where my wife and I had a visit today by what must be Sweden’s two biggest racing fans, Uno and Marianne. To give you an idea how much they are into the sport, Uno has a web page with over 10.000 racing pictures and has been going to races since before I was even born. They will also be our guests in Michigan over the weekend.
I hope they bring some good “Mojo” with them from my home country.
Talk to you soon,
Kenny
kennybrack.com
KB
| News Menu |
| « Press Releases |
| « Race Reports |
| « Pressreleaser |
| « Övriga artiklar |
| Multimedia |
| « Audio Files |
| « Video Files |
