Beaverun’s local series race 7 started with a Saturday practice day. We had a slow start when Grant came back into the pits after a single lap. He explained he had no front grip. No problem, I tuned the front end and sent him out again. Only to repeat a single lap and the request more front grip. I obliged by putting more front end grip into the kart. Grant runs out of the pits takes a single lap and says, “Why can’t we get any front grip?” Frustrated we head back to the trailer for some serious pondering. After some time Grant noticed his front tires were showing cords through the rubber. Instantly Grant’s super sleuth mechanic figured out the problem. We need new front tires… After changing the front tires we spent the rest of the afternoon fine tuning the front end until Grant was satisfied the balance was correct. At 7:55 PM we felt we would be competitive on Sunday. I should mention the Mike Doty assisted us with chassis tuning via cell phone.
Sunday the race group was a bit smaller than usual with only 8 karts in the Jr. Can class. We had two good practice sessions before heading to qualifying. Things would go our way during qualifying when Grant turned a 1:00:738. This was not only the fastest time in our class but the fastest time in our qualifying group that included a faster class of karts. Grant started the heat race on pole. With a good start he held off Blaise Haynes by less than 0.36 second to claim pole position for the main feature.When the green flag fell Blaise suffered mechanical problems and unfortunately was unable to race. After two laps the battle for second allowed Grant the chance to check out and when the checkered fell he was 21 seconds in front of the second place kart.