 Posted July 17th, 2011 10:15 AM IP
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RLHofer
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Posts: 3634
Registered: Apr 2006
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OK, here's how it went down. When I arrived, Bill and Sarge were cleaning the track. RATS! If ONLY I'd waited a while to show up. LOL Just kidding. Bill, you got no business doing that with your shoulder problems! Whenever we come to race, just let me in about an hour and a half before the track officially opens, and I'll see to it that it gets cleaned. YOU provide the materials. I'LL do the cleaning. YOU do the glue. Deal? Anyway people started trickling in and we began putting laps down to run the glue in; kinda stuck at first but it felt good by race time. There was some geezer there, seemed familiar with Bill & Becky and he was acting as de-facto turn marshal while we were practicing. Found out later it was "Travis", former proprietor of Action Raceway and original owner of the track we were playing on! Nice ta meetcha, Travis! By the time tech opened we had 10 racers ready to play, with Tyler, Denton, Garland, Waxahachie, Dallas and Weatherford all represented. As tech closed, Bill's phone rang. Fred Correnti's A/C had gone out and the repairman was supposed to be there early... yadda-yadda-yadda... we all know how THAT goes. I tell Fred, "Sorry, Fred, we're just gettin' ready to qualify; how long will it take you to get here? 35-40 minutes? Tell you what, if you're not here by the end of qualifying, we'll hold the race a few minutes 'til you get here, but you just get to slap your car down and race with no practice". Fred cranked up the Mini and peeled out! Time to start the very first qualifications at a new race track! I just LOVE being in on such historic occasions... my 3rd such occasion this past year, what with Waxahachie and The Black Mamba at River Oaks coming online recently. First up, David Berry of Tyler; David gets to be the FIRST to TQ at the new track(at least until the 2nd qualifier steps up! LOL). GO! Starting from the driver's panel, it's down the straight and through the bank. Then the deadman and through the switchback. He crosses the lap counter to begin his first timed lap and.... the relay trips and the power goes off! Huh??? Again. And Again. And again... same thing. Travis and Bill tried all different kind of variations of settings on the SRT system but we couldn't shake this bug. Finally, we just qualified "manually" in practice mode with one guy watching the clock, counting off the time("30 seconds left", "10 seconds", "times up"). Oh yeah, remember Fred? All the time spent messing with the SRT problem gave Fred enough time to show up just as we were beginning the manual qualifying! We gave Fred a minute-thirty to qualify... THAT was his practice! LOL ON TO THE RACE!!! I won't bore you with a lot of details; I'll let the individual racers fill in those gaps with their OWN stories. Needless to say, There was good racing. There was crashing. There were bent cars. A couple of tweaks with a newly up & running track(as would be expected). In the end, Lonny Getso was the first winner of a race at Fat Cat Race Track! Bill had Lonny sign his track with a Sharpie pen, a tradition he will have all race winners do at Fat Cat. Thanks to Bill & Becky for giving us a nice track to play on with our toy cars! Thanks to Travis for being Race Director! And thanks to all the racers who showed up from all over the DFW metroplex to make this first race a success!
Lonny Getso 235 laps
Richard Hofer 232 laps (TQ - 5.5815)
Kyle Stokes 224 laps
Mike Barnett 224 laps
Fred Correnti 220 laps
Chris Tanner 219 laps
David Berry 214 laps
Vern "Sarge" Bell 202 laps
Patrick Norwood 201 laps
Pete Shick 186 laps
Kraig Beck 125 laps (fastest race lap - 5.6484)
Remember, two wrongs don't make a right..... but three lefts do! Only you're a block over and one block behind! |
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Sorry.
