7-18-10 Shakopee Raceway Park
The trip up to our purple neighbors to the north was very interesting due to the unique nature of the track. Shakopee was by far the hardest track that I have ever raced on. It is a tight and extremely flat quarter-mile oval that wreaked havoc on breaks. We went up a day early to practice on the track knowing that it would be a challenge with an extreme competitive class of local drivers. After doing a little research I found that 15.5 sec. lap time would probably set fast time. By the end of saturday I was beginning to feel pretty comfortable on the track and we left that day turning a 15.7 sec time that I thought would be no problem to make the show. On Sunday we made a slight spring change along with a shock change and we were able to turn a laps in the 15.6 sec range. However, we had problems getting any sort of bite coming off of the corner. My 4bbl quadrajet was part of this problem due to the size of the secondaries. As soon as the 4 bbl opened up I had instantaneous wheel spin due to the extra horse power. But since I do not have a 2 bbl. we had to run what we brung. Qualifying came around and I did not have the best lap as the track heated up causing the car to be pretty loose, I turned a 15.70 20th out of 28 cars. But what was more amazing was the lap times that the local cars were turning. Fast time was set at a blistering speed of 15.1. Here I thought we were only going to be .2 seconds off the top time easily making the show and maybe even starting out front, we now had to race to make it into the feature. I started the last chance race on the outside of the front row. My car did not handle well on the outside so my only hope was to make it to the inside and hold everyone off. I ended up finishing in the 3rd place position spending most of the race on the outside trying to take 2nd place away from another local driver. One race later was the 40 lap feature the main goals were to have fun, complete all the laps, learn the track, and survive. We did just that finishing in the 13th position mostly because may of the top drivers constantly were dropping like flies due to cut tires.
As we continue to tool around on this car we are trying new things every week. This week we tried some new shock packages along with decreasing the front spring rates. Next race we will be trying to improve our front and rear suspension geometry by repositioning the rear trailing arms for more forward bite and by running taller ball joints in the front to increase the control arm angles and help the moment center of the car.
Stay Tuned
Aaron Cain #5
