Jimmy Kouba - Journal Archive

What a busy time of the season. With only a little over a week gone by, we had 5 dates attempted. In the end only 2 were a go, and they had mixed results for our team.

Saturday, July 20, we headed to Alex, refreshed, recharged, and enthused. Alex is fast track and one of the larger ones we hit on the Wissota tour. After our Fargo schooling sessions, we felt up to the challenge. We drew well (Jamie does the drawing now, as I have proved I have no luck many times over.) From our front row start, we couldn’t quite snatch the lead away from a hard charging Rob Caho, Jr. Rob went on to take the win, with us second and Chuck Swenson in hot pursuit for third.

Making the redraw, I pulled out our spot for a feature start, 6th. Could have been worse, but not what we were hoping for. Still it was our best starting spot ever at Alex. Given we’d done OK passing cars before, we were feeling good about our chances. Alex always slicks up by feature time, so we hooked the car up, as usual, and pushed off for the feature. As soon as I hit the track I knew we were in trouble. The track had plenty of stick left to it, so we were WAY too tight. What we didn’t know was that the track had imported new dirt this year and had had a bunch of rain previously that day. Oh well. On the start I discovered that my car was not the only one stuck too tight. The first few laps were quite an experience. We had dropped back to 7th, but were holding steady at that spot. On a restart after a yellow flag midway into the event Raleigh Sandberg and Rob Caho tangled in turn 4 (they were running 3rd and 4th). I thought I had them cleared, but the spinning cars also collected up my nephew Joseph who was running a very respectable 5th. Clearing the original two spinning cars, I t-boned Joseph’s pretty number 74. Between the 4 of us, we had the track completely blocked. I collected Dave Mass in my tail, while Joseph sucked in Jerry Richert Jr. Only Caho was able to repair enough to restart. The other 5 of us were out. The 2K was done with a punctured oil tank and minor front end damage. Loren Langerud went on the take the win with Chuck Swenson second.

Watertown rained out Sunday (the next day). We were spared the trip to the track as we were already headed home for oil tank repairs.

On Wednesday, we trekked up north to Grand Rapids. The weather did not look promising, but the rain had held off from that area most of the day. 15 cars had arrived before the rain set in canceling the event. The Grand Rapids race has been rescheduled for Wednesday, August 7th.

Saturday meant a trip north across scenic Wisconsin to Ashland. This time we only made it to the hotel by the time the downpour struck. Events were again cancelled.

Sunday we enjoyed a relaxing (but seemingly long) drive across Minnesota to Brookings SD in preparation for Monday’s race at Huron SD. Leaving Ashland, we listened to weather bulletins for tornados, high winds and hail in Brookings and the surrounding area. Yippee! The storms had passed by the time of our arrival, but had left many traces of its path in Brookings and points east of there.

Driving to Huron, we watched the outside temp rise from the mid-eighties to an even 100 as we pulled into the track. It must be Huron again: torrid heat. We ended up with a second row start in the heat race, and again finished second. This time the win was by Brad Pake. Pake set a new track record during the event. We were close but no threat. The finish did put us into the dash and we started on the front row (outside of Pake). The few setup changes we made for the race were a few too many. The car was hard to handle and by the second lap we were last. Not the right choice, but still we would have a decent feature start somewhere in the top six.

As winner of the Dash, Brad pulled the starting number for the feature line-up; a SIX. This meant we started on the pole with Pake on the outside. We made a few adjustments to the car and went out for the feature. AGAIN, we over-adjusted. The car was drivable and was not slow, but I could not keep pace. We settled into 7th and wound up with that spot as our finish. Pake went on to take the win over Clint Garner, Gregg Baker, and Micah Scheilman (pleas excuse my name spelling if wrong).

The moral of the story is that this car is very sensitive to adjustments on a big track. We read the track right and went the right direction with setup, but just went too far. Like golf clubs, every car has a sweet spot. We are in the area now and can hit it. We just need to hone our ability to hit it consistently.

What next? Back home again (or close to it). Friday August 2nd we head to Arcadia, WI, a fast and fun track. Sunday brings about the long anticipated Brodix Tournament of Champions at the famed Knoxville Raceway. Then back up to Grand Rapids for our make up event on Wednesday, August 7th. This sets us up for the infamous Wissota August Heat series: 7 events in 7 days starting August 12th.