Chili Bowl - Tulsa - Day Three

Today being Monday for us was the Practice Day for all the Midget entered in the 24th Chili Bowl Nationals. Normally this day is reserved for the 'Rookie Day' and then the 'Champion of Champions Race'. I guess that due to both the economy and the smaller field entered they decided thy would run this practice and move the 'Champion of Chapions Race' to Tuesday Night. This worked perfectly for the two KIWI cars as we then had the opportunity to put them out on this track and test a number of set ups with both Brad and Michael.

The day started at 8am. Not bad as the sleep patterns are still a bit erratic, waking at 2am and then falling back to sleep a couple of hours later. Unlike home, it's dark here early and late again in the morning so when you do wake it seems liike the middle of the night. So we arrived at the Expo Centre and dragged the cars out and set up the pit. This is being done by all the crews so the place was crazy. The first group went out onto the track at 9am and they had around 10 cars in each group. Michael was in Group 6 and we were in Group 16, wonderful thing was the track didn't change that much so we could run similar sets on both cars. Both Michael and Brad were straight on the pace, in fact I would put both these guys in the top 10 percent straight out of the blocks. They had another run a bit later in the day and that was that. You would think that it being a practice day you wouold take it a bit easy as the racing gets started tomorrow, however there was a least four guys that absolutely junked their cars. One guy tore down the wire fence between Turns 1 and 2.

I am impressed by how organised these guys are. They have one group on he dumby grid, one in the shoot, and one out on the track so they get through the 250 plus cars easy. They don't suffer fools, if your car doesn't start in one lap you get sent to the 'Out Gate' and thats that. If you don't do as your told or you spin out they send you to the 'Out Gate'. They run a very well run system and you don't want to be the one to test it.

Tomorrow Michael starts the Kiwi assault and then Brad continues Thursday. The deal is you are split into you group on each day, this has around 64 cars in it. Then they seed each heat group within the 64, and the your marble is drawn by the driver. You then run two heats with a front - back grid, accumulating points. It is not as good thing to draw Gris One and win your heat, as a guy who draws a 12 grid and gets third will get more points as he is awarded points for passing cars aswell which you can't do from Grid One. Then after your two heats they add each drivers points up and take the top 16 to the A main on your night. They run a couple of B mains and get the extra 4 cars out of those. The A main starts and the top three finishers are locked into the A main on Saturday Night. The rest have to work their way through the lesser Mains to make the A on Saturday. Hope that makes sense.

The photo is Brad being pushed out onto the track for his first run, will report on how MP goes tomorrow as he is first up.

 After getting a bit of shopping in we all had dinner together in the hotel. Everyone was pretty tired having either driven across half of North America or flying direct from Auckland, so a bit of sleep was top of the list.

We woke to a better day; it was 0 C. This was the temperature out of the wind. We learnt that the wing blows in from one of two places. If it blows from the south it comes in over Texas and it's hot, or it comes in from Colorado and that is cold, very cold. It's likes to walking into the beer chiller at home in the middle of winter and then jumping into an ice bath. The wind freezes your nose solid after about 10 minutes.

Anyway thats enough about the weather, we all got to the Expo Centre as they were opening up the building. They have reseved spots for all the main teams and then it's a scramble for everyone else. We managed to get the door-man filmed by our TV crew which got him excited and he start paying attention to us and we got into the building with a great pit area about 4 hours ahead of schedule. He liked being on TV that much he gave us a spare pit beside the truck so we could spread out. The cars were all good having travelled half way around the world. Spent the entire day (11 hours in total) sorting out tyres and getting bits sorted ready for practice tomorrow. Everyone cruises past over the course of the day to catch up and see who's got what. It's great to see some of the people we know from the last couple of years.

So we will arrive tomorrow at around 8am to prep for Practice Day.

Tulsa, Oklahoma - Day One (Saturday)

We flew straight from Auckland to Tulsa which had us either on a plane, or in an Airport for a total of just over 29 hours. The good thing is you get it done, however, it wears you out and we all hit the sack as soon as we could; about 1am local time. When we arrived we walked outside the Tulsa Airport where the freezing chill hit us big time. It is -17.5 degrees C here, but it's the wind that gets you. The breeze is only slight but it drops the tempurature to about -32 degrees C. It is simply unbearable. Within 10 minutes you need to get back inside to try and thaw out.

This morning we all assembled in the lobby and took the truck with the race cars in it down to the Expo Centre. It's about 2.5 miles from the hotel and the building is massive, with not a pillar in sight. We checked out the track and the area where the truck and trailers park, which doesn't open until tomorrow so they all que outside waiting.

The track looks like a circle; no straights and really wide. Guess we will see some pretty spectacular slide jobs as the week unfolds. I have added some pictures of the team and they will be updated along with the "Daily Story" each day.

Greg

More photos to be added to Media Page

With a full schedule of four meetings in just two weeks coming to a close we headed to the big one at Western Springs Speedway. The day was scorchingly hot, so we expected the track to be slicker than previous nights.

The format was to be individual qualifying, in event 4, which theoretically should have produced a reasonably drivey surface. The problem was that there had not been nearly enough water put on the track and what made it worse was that the Sprintcars were thrown out immediately prior to qualifying. Every time this happens the Sprintcars seal off the track and ensure a dust bowl for the rest of the night. The qualifying was incident free and as expected the fast guys all qualified toward the front of the grid. Pickens was the second to last car on the track and did a great job with the fastest time.

Brad's next run was event 14, this was the Midget A Dash. For this race the drivers start in the positions they qualified in. The race gives the opportunity to improve your position for the main event. Brad started and finished 4th.

The 50 lap race was always going to be a one lane race with the drivers using about 1/2 throttle stickin hard on the pole line. The terrible shame was that the crowd was huge and they sat and watched a 50 lap race with no passing. The leaders struggled to get past the back markers, the crowd got covered in dust and it was a somewhat boring race. Great to see Jerry Coons Jnr get the win, he wanted this one to add to his list of achievemnts and the team were very happy. Kevin Swindell ran a great race too coming from the back to finish 2nd and Michael Kendall filled the final spot on the podium. Brad was running fourth when the white flag dropped but got a flat right rear leading into pine-tree bend and was forced to hobble around watching cars fly past, finally croosing the line in 13th.

The race ran 41 laps from the start until we got a yellow, and then it ran the final 8 laps to the finish. Surely the shortest 50 lapper in history, time wise.

Brad finished 3rd in the International Points Series behind Swindell in second and Coons Jnr as the winner.

We are all looking forward to getting on the plane Friday to head to Chili Bowl. I will have daily updates here on this site with photos and general interest points as we work our way through the week. The lads finally got the Midgets out of the container in L.A. very late Wednesday local time so they are bit behind schedule. They drive the 1800 miles across to Tulsa needing to be there by Thursday to put the truck in the que. These rigs sit in the que until Sunday when the gates open. It sounds crazy but we need to do this to ensure we secure a good pit area reasonably close to the track.

07/01/10 10:14pm