Racing Legend Cars has been a long time dream for myself. I had not gotten the chance to race until the middle of my freshman year of college but once I got that spark there was no stopping me. In one year I ran 14 races, receiving two wins and nine podiums, and winning one championship. And I did all this on a microscopic budget. Wanting to be even more competitive, I have put my main racing aside for the summer to give myself a larger budget to work with in the 2013 season, so long as the world does not end before then!! However, with the larger budget I will be making a switch to cars with suspension, street tires, more power, less grip, and the biggest thing of all, more styles of racing with one vehicle. I can take the car to Texas Motor Speedway and racing asphalt circle track racing. Remove the fenders and I can take the car to Kennendale and race in the dirt. Road race at Eagles Canyon. Drag race at North Star Dragway. Auto cross whenever I am not doing anything else. Or travel to Colorado and race Pikes Peak. Any type of racing you can imagine, this little car can handle (except for off road racing and Global Rallycross). I am really hoping to gain valuable experience in as many different disciplines of racing as I can so I can hopefully become a professional drive either on a racing circuit or as a test driver or driving instructor.
As far as the goal of getting a Legends car goes, I am planning on spending $8,000 on the car and purchasing a $4,000 - $5,000 24' enclosed trailer. I am halfway to that goal after one month and still have two months where I can work this many hours so the goal is looking like a soon to be reality!
As for my racing right now, I am racing at Pole Position Raceway, which happens to be one of my two jobs. I run three or more races a week there and have learned a lot about this style of indoor kart racing as well as what goes on behind the scenes of races. I will start with my personal racing. When Pole Position Raceway (P2R) opened in December of 2011, I began racing electric karts and started learning a new driving style. At first, I would drive the karts at P2R like I drive my sprint kart. This did not work out for me as I was constantly a second and a half slower than the fastest guys each week. Since then I have run almost 40 races (almost 120 miles) and have gotten much better, in fact, I am now on the leaderboard running on tenths or even hundredths off the fastest drivers. This is encouraging because one of them has been racing for 20-30 years, the other one who is always on the leaderboard is just plain good at indoor karting. But with this seat time I have learned how to be a much smoother driver and have began taking time off of my laps in the sprint kart. It will be interesting to see how the electric karts compare to the legends car! As far as the way races are run, I am the flagman and race official who calls the shots during the races and I am responsible for keeping all of the drivers and vehicles safe. I see drivers do things I never thought was possible, and not in a good way either! I have seen so many different kinds of accidents, and on-purposes, that I can spot when something is going to happen while watching a race as well as racing in those races. I have also gotten a larger degree of respect for race officials across the world who run races weekly!
Hopefully in a couple of months I will be blogging about legend car testing and race days once again and not talking about work. Until then, have fun doing the things you love, thank you for the support, and I will see you at the track!