Victory

Today was a huge day in the backyard go kart racing series. Today we had our largest field ever with 12 drivers. Things were wild and wooly from the start. Just like the Nascar practice session friday night, we started out with three different hard crashes in practice. It started with Chris Southerland losing it in turn 3 and over correcting head first into and through the fence. Next it was Al Nardone's time as he took the same kart Chris has just wrecked and put it head first into the swing set knocking the toe in out of line. A few minutes later after 2 hard crashes today and a flip last week left all four motor mounts on the block completely sheered off and as Chris was driving into turn one the motor just fell off.

Next it was my turn to get in on the crash action as I took the number 1 grey kart into the fence at turn 2 slapping the right side into a fence post and breaking off the rear wheel and spindle.

So before we had made the first qualifying lap, we already had two karts in the garage damaged pretty bad. We replaced the rear wheel and spindle and one of the two made it back to the track. The other kart is sitting wating to be disassembled and rebuilt.

Next came qualifying. We all qualified in the same kart to assure that no one had a kart advatage over the other during qualifying. Here are the qualifying results. I hate to sound like I am bragging but I will because I took the pole position by almost a full second in the field of 12.

Driver Qualifying Time in Seconds
1. Sammy Clary 11.33
2. Chris Southerland 12.05
3. Brydon Hiner 12.11
4. Brian Harwood 12.29
5. Bryan Holder 12.46
6. Bob Hiner 12.52
7. Paige Allen 12.79
8. Cole Taylor 12.80
9. Al Nardone 12.95
10. Justin Kay 13.00
11. Jason Allen 15.11
12. Jake Hiner 15.86

The racing action started just where practice left off. In heat 1 Jake Hiner got all four wheels off the ground as he battled and made contact with his brother. Bob came flying into the mix and tangled with Brydon before he pulled away for the victory.

Heat 2 started with Bryan Holder pulling into the pits with mechanical problems while Brian Harwood pulled away from Justin Kay for the easy victory.

Heat 3 saw Jason Allen take control early and pull away from Chris as he experienced a couple of spins.

Heat 4 saw a disqualification of Cole Taylor and he motored past Paige Allen under the pace lap. Cole citing that his throttle was hung up was still disqualified.

Heat 5 saw me advance easily as I used my spin and win move going into turn 1 on the final lap. I moved inside of Bryan Holder and gave him a tap sending him spinning while I kept on winning.

Next up I advanced to face off against Jason Allen and once again even though he knew what was coming, he could do nothing to stop the inevitable. Once again I used the spin to win and sent Jason spinning in turn four. He never recovered and I pulled away to a large victory.

Finally I finished off the trifecta with another spin to win victory over our youth minister Justin. I tried to spin him in turn four three times and he was able to fend me off. Finally I caught him off gaurd going into the downhill turn 2 and I sent him spinng head first into the swing set.

I further established my racing dominance in the Backyard 50.

In other grudge racing matches involving a battle of youth ministers, Bryan Holder may have pulled the upset of the day with one of the best backyard racing moves I have ever seen. Coming up off of turn 4, Bryan caught Justin Kay off gaurd and instead of darting to the inside, he pulled a Tom Cruise Days of Thunder move and went to the outside and actually rode the fence without catching in the fence. As he wet by you could hear the metal grinding on the fence and Bryan showed that he does have some go kart skills. The move caught Justin off gaurd and he never recovered. He choked over the course of the nest 5 laps and spun twice. The youth minister racing trophy goes to Bryan Holder.

All in all it was an awesome day of racing and we only totaled one kart that should be back up and running in a few weeks with a new motor and new steering parts. Check back later for some action photos from the day.