Every year, Warburg Racing Park along with Edmonton & District Kart Racing Association puts on an awesome event called the Fall Classic. It’s all about fun and there are some great prizes up for grabs as the winner of every class banks a thousand dollars! My Dad and I decided we would team up together for the Classic this year and he would tune for me. Now, I usually have a professional tuner, so I knew with my dad and his very limited know-how in fine-tuning a kart – it would be up to me! We packed the trailer and headed for the track on Friday, and when we got to the track we unloaded and got a couple laps under our belts before it was dark. We were actually very fast on Friday and I was happy with how my Dad and I were working together.
SATURDAY
How the event worked was Saturday was actually a Club race for the EDKRA and Sunday was the Fall Classic. This meant Saturday was just a fun, easygoing day. Also, Saturday had two Prefinals. In the first one the grid was based on where you qualified, and in the second it was an inverted field of qualification. Then they average your finishes and make the grid for the Final. Qualifying came and we were very strong as we put it a couple tenths ahead of everyone on pole, but there was one problem… we never put a transponder on! So we had to start both Prefinals last because we never posted a time in qualifying. No big deal. We started 13th in both Prefinals, which should have been fun coming through the pack, but the problems worsened. For the first Prefinal my dad turned the choke on and forgot to turn it off. I honestly thought I had a major problem with the engine on the warm up lap so I came into the pits. I would have never thought my dad would have left the choke on. When I’m in the pits my dad comes over says, “choke” and turns it off. I raced out of the pits and got back to racing. When all said and done I finished up fourth.
In the second Pre-main I went in easy but there was a four-kart pile up that ended up right in front of me taking up the whole track! I had to wait for them to move before I could continue to race. I made my way up to fourth again, from way back because of the start. The Final was a night race but there was something interesting about his night race, it was pouring rain. The only thing that was on my mind was I had one chassis for Sunday, don’t get into a crash or I’ll be watching my race tomorrow from the stands. I came out of turn one in fourth, made no passes because you could literally not see a thing, but I finished second. Then it was straight to preparing the kart for Sunday.
SUNDAY
I had high hopes for Sunday but again it was another struggle. In qualifying one of the tires went flat in the very beginning but I still managed to pull off a front row position in P2. In the Pre-main I had an awesome start as I held the outside in corner one and took P1. Nothing went wrong the whole race and I took the win. Finally, the Final was here, what I had been waiting for. On the start I kept P1 and opened up a gap on second. I was blistering fast in the beginning with a new track record of 48.810, but half way through the race something just had to go wrong. The chassis actually snapped on the seat tab and this went on to shear the bolt off the seat strut. I dropped huge time immediately and what was a nice lead went to a battle for first. I knew something had gone terribly wrong. I held the outside of corner one five times while second place tried to get around me but it got to the point where he was close to a full second faster a lap. When he finally managed to get by me he pulled away from me quite easily and I had to settle for a second position. It was a pretty tough weekend with a lot of really bad luck, but at the end of the day I banked five hundred bucks for 2nd and got to spray champagne on my Dad, which I have wanted to do for a while!
Once again I must say Thanks to my sponsors: Sylvan Lake R.V, OMP, RLV, Courtney Concepts, Tillett Racing Seats, Bell Helmets, Polen Designs, BRK Racing Engines and Tony Kart for all their support.
