Page 39 of Trading Paint
Shutting my eyes, I listened to the engine. There was a vibration I couldn’t decipher and my temps were off the charts after my heat race. We posted the fastest qualifying lap but the car seemed to go to shit after that.
“210-240,” I shouted over the rumbling before pulling the coupler out and let the engine run out of fuel.
Spencer’s eyes widened.
“Fuck, it’s gonna blow. We can’t run the feature with those temps.” Spencer grumbled pushing his wet hair from his face.
“No shit.” I mumbled tossing my helmet inside the cockpit.
Figures this shit would happen when I needed to run good. This was a National event and placing in the top five in a feature was something that needed to happen.
“Jameson,” Sway called out from inside the hauler. “You’re in the next heat race.”
“How?”I knew I didn’t make the transfer spot.
“Shaley dropped out. Transmission’s shot—you’re in.”
I nodded and pulled my helmet back on. “We need to run it. If it blows, it blows.” I shrugged when Spencer began to grumble again about this being our last motor.
There was nothing we could do. Once the temperatures spiked like that it was a given it’d blow but you couldn’t be sure when.
Surprisingly we did well in the second heat and advanced to the feature where the track changed drastically.
I corrected my line, searching for the new groove while gobs of mud flew, slapping my helmet visor. Coming out of turn two I yanked a tear-off in order to clear my vision; the narrow strip of cellophane fluttered away.
Depending on a track conditions, it varied how many I tore away.
Track conditions have a tendency to change quickly on dirt, so you come out of turn two and entering turn three, it’s different.
Asphalt and dirt are extremely different. Dirt changes tremendously throughout the night whereas asphalt changes too, just not as drastically. You can actually feel it when asphalt was changing.
Dirt is weird. When most people think of dirt they think it’s the same everywhere they go.
That’s not entirely true.
With composition of dirt being different everywhere you go, each track has a unique personality. Where some tracks dry up and resemble asphalt, others stay moist and sticky all night.
That night the track dried out so it was hard to find a line and setup my car worked well with. At tracks like Cottage Grove, I preferred running high and letting my right rear bounce off the cushion, jolting me forward. Sometimes this worked, other times it didn’t. It seemed that any line I tried, my car would hang on.
That’s the other thing with dirt, when the track changes, the groove changes and you have to find your new groove and hope like hell it has the same speed as the one you just had. You’re constantly looking for the new groove and some racers don’t even see the track changing.
We made it to the feature but the engine wasn’t what took us out of the race with six laps to go. In my 360-Sprint I ran three brakes, every corner but the right. It was a trick my dad taught me that helps with cornering at tracks like Cottage Grove when the rails tend to get bunched up by the slower cars.
This obviously does nothing for your stopping power.
So there I was running second next to Justin West, when I leaned against him in turn one, couldn’t slow down as much as I needed and took us both out and destroyed both cars.
I immediately got out, checked on Justin and apologized. I hated that I took him out in Skagit for a stupid mistake and now here I was taking him out again.
Now I’m not going to say I wasn’t pissed. Iwaspissed. I hated losing. Anyone who tells you they don’t mind losing is full of shit.
I walked back to the pits while they brought my car around. Looking over the smashed wing and front axle that was twisted around the side, I hated to think what it was going to cost to fix it and how hard my dad would make me work at the shop to pay for the parts.
Though my dad had money to fix the cars I destroyed, it didn’t mean that shit came for free. I worked my ass off in that shop to be able to race. All that hard work didn’t go without learning either. I could put a sprint car together from the ground up if need be and to me that was huge to learning these cars and how they handled.
In turn, I felt that it made me a better driver understanding things like that.
I took my time getting back to the hauler, watching the last few laps. Sway sat beside Spencer and Alley, biting her nails. She did this when she was gauging my reaction to something.
