Grant has captured his fifth Junior League championship at Allsports Grand Prix. This season brought many new faces to Allsports with as many as 17 different competitors racing in the junior league.

The spring league will begin Feb. 10^th. If you are interested in getting your kids involved in racing, Allsports is a great avenue. The junior league is divided in two groups based on age and skill level. Get started today by calling Allsports at 571-434-9566.

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WKA kicked off the 2008 season with a return to Daytona. The event turned out to be larger than expected with many racers eager to race since the 2007 season did not include the world famous track. The main track featured the Dunlop Tire Road Racing Series while the sprint track hosted the Manufacturer’s Cup. The weather was hot and the racing hotter. Things got started with a Friday practice followed by a welcome party for the racers which included free food and a hot lap around the Daytona Speedway.

This was Grant’s first national race and we decided to race with MRP Motorsports under the expert direction of Chris Lobaugh. Grant ran six practice sessions on Friday while we sorted out his new Birel R30X chassis. By the end of the Friday practice we felt pretty comfortable about the Saturday race. Although there aren’t any elevation changes to speak of, the track was a lot of fun to drive according to Grant. With the amount of karts entered things got hectic on Saturday with respect to track time. We got only one practice session before qualifying and the pre-final races were canceled due to time constraints. The races have a 30 kart maximum and there were almost fifty entries in Grant’s class. In this case WKA takes the top 25 qualifiers and the rest go to a consolation race. The top 5 finishers for the “consi” race round out the 30 drivers for the main feature. We put fresh rubber on the kart and headed out to qualify. There is little time separating the karts at qualifying because there are so many entries. When Grant left the pits he caught the driver in front of him by the first corner and spent the 3 laps of qualifying trying to get around the slower kart. This meant that Grant’s qualification time was about one half second slower than his fastest practice time. This in turn placed Grant fifteenth on the grid for the consi race. The consi race is only six laps and in order to make the main feature Grant would need to start fifteenth and end up fifth in a six lap race. When the checkered fell Grant had made it all the way up to seventh place but he just missed the cutoff for the feature.

With Saturday behind us Grant was determined more than ever to get a good qualifying session. He did exactly that by turning a time that was 0.6 seconds faster than he had driven the entire weekend. This placed him seventeenth out of 50 karts locking him in to the feature. Sunday saw the pre-final and final race unlike Saturday. Grant finished the pre-final in the eighteenth spot after trading paint with two other drivers going down the front straight. As Grant entered the front straight he moved to the inside of the lead kart only to have another kart move to his inside at the same time. Now Grant was sandwiched in between two karts going down the front straight. Tire smoke was rolling and the karts nearly ended up in a pile at the first turn but some how the three drivers separated and kept moving. When the feature started Grant was in the outside of the ninth row. After many position swaps back and forth Grant ended the day with an eighteenth place finish. Not bad for a first time at a national race with a record setting crowd coming from as far away as California and Canada.

MRP was an important part of Grant’s successful weekend. Chris Lobaugh was able to ask Grant the right questions and made amazing chassis tuning decisions to help us sort the new chassis. The entire MRP crew was more than helpful in every way. They come highly recommended for anyone thinking of jumping into the national circuit.

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