KART S. S. race #2 Tulsa, OK April 1st-2nd

By: White Motorsports Racing

(April 2nd, 2006) -- Friday night while getting ready for the trip Saturday morning we decided to give our friends at the track a call to see how the pit spaces were filling up. Their reply, "get here now" so that we did. We rolled in at 2:45 in the morning and found a spot to sleep.

When we woke up on Saturday it was 7:00 A.M. bright and early. The sky was sunny and it looked to be a scorcher. The days first practice began and I knew we were fast right out of the box. The day seemed to fly right by but luckily for us we had the chassis already close from last weekends club race. Towards the end of day we were running 26.90s consistently on old tires.

Dad had to leave around 4 to go to a charity function back in Grove. So, I was left alone to practice the last two sessions. He left it up to make some "crazy" chassis adjustments. Some changes I tried were linking the fourth rail up and removing the front torsion bar. WRONG, that made the kart so different to drive it was indescribable. Good thing we already had a good kart. If i remember right my best lap was a 27.85.

After practice I had a chance to talk with one of our WMR sponsors, Bill Heck of Photos Etc. (www.PhotosEtc.biz) Bill said he was doing alright which is good to hear as we don't get a chance to talk often. This race was Bill's first race to photograph since last year but by looking
at his photos you would have never known he was away (www.PhotosEtc.biz/page59.htm).

Over Saturday night we got one of those Oklahoma thunderstorms which washed away a lot of rubber on the track.

On Sunday morning when arriving at the track we found the track to have only one puddle of water on it. So much for mounting those rain tires last night! For the first practice of two we broke-in our new MG yellow tires which we were testing this weekend. The tires seemed a little un-balanced to me. For
the next session we tried a shorter flex to move the power band up more. The idea came to us from our sponsor Jim Stoud of MISI Racing Engines. The actual flex came from Ron Pattison of RPMotorsports. (www.RPMotorsportsInc.com)

For qualifying we were 2nd quick and only 4 hundereds of a second off the pole. That was until the top qualifier Skyler James was DQ 'ed for "Hot Fuel". I almost feel sorry for Skyler. All three times he has raced at JRP he has had the worst of luck and yet he is always fast, you can count on that.

Our prefinal was uneventful. We got out to the lead right off the bat and held it. We were challenged for it twice going into T1 but both times we were able to hold them off. We finished first, Zach Tipett second, and Skyler James third after starting in last (7th).

For the final we got out to an early lead and held it for the first 4 laps. On lap 3 Skyler broke a chain. My first thoughts were "not again! Oh wait. YES!" sorry Skyler I had to put that in. At the start of lap 5 Zach got on my inside going into T1. He made a clean pass and I fell into line. I hounded him for the next 3 laps before I pulled the trigger to retake the lead. From then the laps just started to tick by. Towards the end I could feel Zack starting to turn up the wick. On lap 13 of 14 he had enough following and wanted to do some leading. He got under me entering T1 with me fighting hard on the outside. T2 and T3 is a double apex, off camber, right hander. For this turn I had the inside. In T3 a slow, tight, left hand hairpin I took my normal line and at the same time protecting my position. Then we made contact. Zach had climbed up over my LR tire and made contact with my pipe. We both came almost to a dead stop but, I was able to get going quicker. The race ended 2 laps later. Me first, Zach second, followed by Irene Rose who picked up third.

White Motorsports Racing would like to thank all their sponsors for their continued support to their team as well as to racing. Those include MiSi Racing Engines, RPMotorsports, Walters Web Design, and Photos ext. We look forward to being able to advertise and give all the recognition we can to our current sponsors in the 2006 racing season.

For more information on the WMR Team please visit www.WhiteMotorsportsRacing.com.