Feb 17th & 18th, 2001

As in Formula One, Ice Racing has its silly season too.

This weekend brought out the boy in the men as the prevalent attitude might be best portrayed by some of the common utterances overheard after a race:

"You hit me"
"I'm filing a complaint"
" I'll see you on the track!"
"Even if that wasn't you I'm still mad at you for last weekend"
"Drive nice or I'll take my car and go home"

As the season draws near to a close a lot of racers now realise that no, they are not going to be champion of their class, and they feel cheated somehow. So, like spanked little boys, they pout and feel sorry for themselves and then try to get even or blame someone else for their failure. Hey people , that's racin'! There's only room for one at the top! Either get there or get outta the way!

Ok.
Sorry there are no pics from me this week I had my hands full with the Ovlov, read on. Mike was not able to race the Ovlov this weekend so I splurged and spent the extra $90 to race both first and second driver class. Whoa, is that ever busy and obviously twice as much fun! I switched to wz02's early on Saturday as the temp was about minus 20 C and the ice very clean. This turned out to be the best choice. However, I could only catch and stay past Tom Prentice's Skoda once this weekend and Larry Kovak's Skoda continued to be a flash of blue disappearing just beyond the next snow bank most of the weekend. Other than the Skoda's not much else was a problem. The bearded lady (Raul Backstrom) was a passenger in the Ovlov in the last race on Saturday which had been combined into a 3 class (rear, front and all wheel drive) 20 lap feature ($20 entry) to raise money for the new time-keeping trailer. There was a lot of yelling and confusion in the car as we came up to the corner at the quanset hut and as a consequence I lost all consentration and we nose dived into a snow bank that might as well have been made of concrete! The resulting damage was a buckled lower control arm. This was the last race Saturday so I parked it back at the paddock and headed to the Cliffe.

Sunday around 9 am , as I began to awake from a deep sleep, I remembered the buckled control arm. Off to the track after a filling breakfast of french toast and sausages. Upon jacking the car and a closer inspection it was thought (since there was no replacement part at the track) that repair might be possible. This proved to be impossible as the new shape of the control arm had strengthened the metals' resolve to retain its new configuration resulting in about a 10 degree toe out. No matter I thought, this had happened to the passenger side front wheel and the track was being run clockwise today. This would simply give me a better bite on turn in! With the exception of a bit of confused left/right steering wheel travel on the straight it worked beautifully! The added toe out on the right side front made the front of the car behave like it was on rails on turn in and helped to compensate for the locked rear end wanting to push the car off corner. Now if only there was a way to quickly change the toe out to compensate from Saturdays counterclockwise track to Sundays clockwise track or vice versa.

Any how all this did was guarantee third place finishes (behind the two Skodas) and a good workout on my arms.

I 'm not sure how it got that way but the passenger side of the car "B" post is caved in about 6 inches. Also I lost part of the rear bumper to #SACsty when his front and my rear bumpers hooked up as I passed him. I thought of towing him round, you know to help him out but changed my mind and hammered on the brakes to disengage the two bumpers. It worked as my bumper certainly became disengaged :)

Till next weekend ...
keep your fingers crossed, there may be yet another race weekend with a six hour enduro race hosted by the Minden Kinsmen and I'll still have a car to drive!!!!