Jimmy Kouba - Journal Archive

Grins are in!!! If you've read these updates for a while now, you'll know that means "We won!" Beyond that, the past weeks have also seen the start of Jake's karting season and a slight change to our race day crew assignments. It was not all Champaign and Power Bars, though, as we continue battling our demons and water trucks.

Feeling more confident, we headed back to Jackson, MN on May 17th. First off, my "magic" fingers failed me at the draw. We started last in our heat. The track was sticky and smooth in Hot Laps, but was starting to develop minor ruts by heat race time. We ended our heat in 7th which meant a long row to hoe for the feature. Starting way, way back in the pack (18th), we began trying to work through the field. The track had remained tacky, but had grown some deep furrows (speaking of hoeing) as a result of the many events on the soft surface. The best news of the night: we were racy. We raced wheel to wheel many laps trading spots often, but we were not all that fast. Thanks to a few passes and attrition of the front runners we managed a 12th place finish. Wade Nygaard took the win followed by Brad Pake, Jake Peters, Gregg Bakker, and Rob Tvedte. Sonny Richert finished 10th while Roger Rager and Brother Joe were 13th and 15th respectively.

Sunday brought out our first season grins. This set wasn't because of a win, it just came from pure fun and excitement. Jake and family ventured out for the first kart race of the season. Jake is sporting a newer kart this year. For this event he ran in the kids’ class, but the plan is to race with the adults as soon as his crew gets the new motor together. Jake's lap times steadily improved. By the end of the evening, he was turning his fastest laps ever. Thanks to Kaitie for taking over stop watch duty. It was a great night out and a fun way to end the week. His next event is this Sunday, June 1. Hopefully, the Blue Wazoom (that's a motor) will be ready to rumble.

Next, we looked forward to getting back to our traveling program. ABC Speedway near scenic Ashland, WI hosted the Wissota Sprints on May 24th. If I didn't need them to drive, I'd break each and every one of my "magic" fingers. The traitors drew so bad, we were 19th out of 19 cars. Again we would start in the back our heat. Starting 7th in the first of the three heats, we did OK, but not anything to brag on. We only managed to move up to 5th. This meant we'd start 13th (7th row inside) for the feature.

When the green flag flew for the feature I knew we had something. The trouble was we were deep in traffic. The first few laps were not very dramatic, but we did slowly work our way up to 8th by the time the caution flew for a spinning Tony Hargrave (about lap 7 or 8, I lose track). Our car was getting better and better. On the restart, we passed 2 cars in the first turn. Another lap or so and we snuck by John Nelson to take 5th, We then caught Alan Gilbertson who was in a hot battle with Brother Joe over the 3rd and 4th spots. Given the car would work anywhere on the track, I was able to take Alan on low side then passed Joe around the top the following lap. Just as we were catching 2nd place Roger Rager, the yellow waved again, bunching us up. This was GOOD.

At the restart, Roger charged hard on leader Loren Langerud into turn 1, we charged on Roger making it a close three-way battle. We eventually put Roger firmly behind us and concentrated on Loren to steal the lead. With the top groove slowing, our advantage was on the middle and bottom of the track. Like Roger, Loren put up a heck of a fight, but we firmly had the lead by the time we caught lapped traffic. Again our car was good most anywhere and that was the edge we need to keep the lead and take home our first win of the season. It was time for big grins for driver and crew!!!! Loren took second followed by Roger, Joe, Nelson and Gilbertson.

Thanks to Ashland's sponsors for their contingency awards. A bottle of Champaign was awarded to the feature winner in each class. We also received free race car bumpers for winning the feature from starting 8th or further back. Last, but not least, we won ABC Speedway's $50 Hard Charger award for passing the most cars. Great night!!! PLUS with this win, we extended our streak to 10 consecutive years with at least 1 feature win. Thanks also to our sponsors, crew and fans for making it all possible.

Side note: When traveling at night from Ashland to the Duluth area, BE ALERT! Jamie, the late-night rig driver, spotted 37 deer and 1 red fox in the 57 mile drive.

So where did this water truck thing come in? Our weekend was not done, with Proctor, MN racing on Sunday night. From the high of winning, we dealt with a less then stellar finish at Proctor. Starting toward the back of our heat, we managed a fourth. Although I didn't think the car felt good, it did LOOK good later when I watched the tape. We were quickly closing the gap on both the 2nd and 3rd place cars as the checkered flag flew. Our heat finish placed us 10th in the grid for the feature.

The track had been very dry and dusty throughout the heats, so track officials decided to send out the water truck to mist the track. Unfortunately for us the misting ended up being a drenching. Even with the two events before our feature working it in, the track stayed very tacky for the start of our event. For our chassis setup we gambled the stick would blow off and leave a dry-slick surface. Oops!!! We were so tight, I dang near tipped it over on the start. She stood up on the right front tire in the first turn. I didn't go over (just did a little 1-wheel dance), but did lose a few spots. A couple of laps later, I bicycled her in turn 1 (thought the crowd wanted to see my underpan); more spots lost. From there I ran a pretty conservative line, kept the car on the ground and held my own, maybe even gained a position or two back. We had a red flag just under mid-way in the race. The track still felt sticky, so we loosened the car up quite a bit. Two laps after the restart, it finally dusted off. We were immediately too loose. Even being too loose, towards the end we were in better shape then many of the cars in front of us. We passed back a few cars to end up 9th. Jerry Richert Jr. won coming from 11th at the start. Jerry was followed by Bruce Defries, Chuck Swenson, Leigh Thomas (a new daddy this winter), and Alan Gilbertson.

Up next is our first trip of the year to North Central Speedway near Brainerd, MN on Saturday, May 31. In other schedule news, we have added a couple of Jackson races back into our June schedule and the July 20th show in Watertown WI has been cancelled by the promoter.