Hi everyone!
I hope you all had a nice holiday period and got some time to relax. It was nice to be home in San Diego with my family and friends. I got some time to catch up on schoolwork (it really builds up with my schedule). I went karting out at Cal Speedway (I was so fast my old team wanted me to blow off the Chili Bowl to come back and kart!) I finished signing up with Keith Kunz Racing out of Indiana for the entire 2008 USAC Sprint and Midget Series. I am really excited to be racing in USAC with Keith. USAC Sprint and Midget racing is the place where guys like Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Kasey Kahne, and Jason Leffler made their name before moving to Charlotte for successful careers in NASCAR. The competition in USAC is super tough. There are about 5 other guys my age who are signed to deals with NASCAR teams and placed with teams in USAC to learn and prove themselves. It’s kind of like AAA baseball for guys like us. In fact, many of the NASCAR development guys either drive for Toyota (Cruz Pedregon Racing), Mopar (Kasey Kahne Racing), or Chevy (Tony Stewart Racing) factory sponsored teams. It’s cool to drive for Keith’s team, though, because a lot of those NASCAR guys I mentioned actually drove for Keith in their past.
Now to the Chili Bowl, I left San Diego on Wednesday, January 2nd and headed back to Indy to help the team prepare for the race. We were running 8 midget cars at the Chili Bowl which was the most for any team! A midget is a 960lb, 360 hp open wheel car that is very nimble and fun to drive. When I got to the shop most of the cars were bare framed brand new Bullet chassis. Bullet is the brand that Keith manufacturers and sells. My teammate for 2008, Daren Hagen and I spent the next five days at the shop helping the crew get the cars built. We were there at least 12 hours each day to make sure that when we left we were ready to put the cars on the track. After working all day on Sunday, I got in the driver’s seat of one of our two rigs and drove from Indy to Tulsa. We left at 8 pm and got to Tulsa at 8 am. I drove 560 miles and pulled a 24 hour day! Once there we parked the trucks and just went to the hotel and crashed for the day. Also my mom Kim got to Tulsa that day and it was nice to have her there to hang out with for the week.
On Tuesday, we got to hot lap. It’s not like most races though. There were over 280 cars pre-entered and the track is only like 1/5 mile long. So, each group only gets three laps of running at speed. So I went out and ran my three laps. They went well but it’s hard to know where you stack up in such a short session. In addition to the hot laps all the rookies at the race have to qualify just to get a chance to race. This takes the field for the event to just under 300. After Tuesday, all the racers are assigned a day from Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday that is their day to race and try to qualify for the A Main on Saturday. We drew Thursday as our day. Wednesday was pretty chill as I just hung out and watched where other cars were running and got to bed early before the big day (part 1).
As if it isn’t already confusing enough, I have to explain how the racing is set up. On your day during the week, you draw for a position in your first heat. We drew seventh out of eight in the eighth heat. In the heat and all races before that night’s A Main you not only get points for your finish position, but also for making passes (they call these passing points). Then for the next qualifying race you are assigned a new starting spot and the same deal goes. Based on the points that you get for these two races, this determines if you make it to the A-Main, and where you start. For my first heat race I moved from 7th to 5th and picked up a few points based on my passes. In my second qualifying race I started 10th. However, I moved up much better in this race and finished 2nd. I even made a cool outside pass on four time Chili Bowl champion and World of Outlaws legend Sammy Swindell! This put me in 6th for the final A Main of the night out of 24 who qualified from the 95 guys who raced that night. In this night of racing the A Main had a lot of really good talent including Sammy Swindell, Tony Stewart, Jon Stanbrough and JJ Yeley. The race was 25 laps long, and if the yellow flag comes out those laps don’t count. Once the race started the car felt good, but somehow Sammy Swindell passed me early and it was not as easy to get past him as it was in the heat race. Plus my car “tightened” up (this means it was harder to get the car to turn into the corner). I actually fell back to ninth while trying to pass Sammy! However, on lap 17 we got a caution, and I was able to use the on board controls to soften the handling of the car. It worked, because on the restart I went back to the high side and got Sammy plus two other drivers. This got me up to 6th, and then I passed another car for 5th.
Next up was Tony Stewart, like Sammy he is a past champion of the Chili Bowl (2007) and not someone who is easy to get around. Also, I was in a hurry to get past him because I thought I was only passing him for fifth place, and only the top four automatically transfer to the A Main on Saturday night. If you don’t get into the A Main you move into the alphabet soup on Saturday of over 20 heat races then have to try to race your way into the A Main! I tried to get him on the high line, but he moved up and didn’t allow it. However, he couldn’t get “forward bite” out of the corner and I was able to get him in turn one on the last lap. This moved me into fourth and I actually just missed 3rd at the line. This whole time I thought I finished 5th. When the race was over I was waived to the infield and it wasn’t until my car owner Keith told me we got fourth that I knew for sure where I finished. It was a great relief to make the A Main and not have to worry about racing in on Saturday. When I got out of the car it was also cool because all of the media wanted to ask me how I passed Tony Stewart, plus my dad Tobin got to Tulsa to see the race on Thursday, so all in all it was a good day at the track.
Friday was a lot like Wednesday, except I did get to do a little racing…remote control car racing. They had an r/c race for the racers and I finished second. After that, it was just watch the Friday races and get a good night sleep for Saturday.
Finally, after all this work we got to Saturday. It’s a long day if you are in the A Main already, as I said there are over 20 races and a hot lap session for everyone. So we got to the track at 9 am, and watched and waited. On top of this, the race was shown on pay-per-view, and I was set up to get interviewed right before the race on live TV. At around six pm I got suited for hot laps, the interview, and then the race. Once this started, the rest of the day went very quickly. My car owner Keith and I both felt pretty good about the car. I also talked to one of my teammates, Jason Leffler, and we both thought the track was going to be hard to pass on but that our cars would be able to make passes even with the tough track. I did the pre-race interview for the TV broadcast and that was fun. They asked about how the week went and I enjoyed talking about the event and the competition. Finally, the A Main was about to happen. I started 10th after a drawing for the top 12 from Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. This put me just in front of Kasey Kahne and we both had cars that could drive on the high line and the low line, while most guys were kind of stuck to the low line. At the green, it was pretty crazy, everyone wanted to go right to the front immediately. I felt good about the car and actually started to move up into the top 10. I made it up to 7th before I hit a group of guys who were battling three and four wide. I wanted to get past because I knew an accident was going to happen, before I could get past, the accident happened right in front of me! I had to spin to avoid the accident and almost had it saved when I got turned around. I had to be pushed for a restart, and this moved me back to 21st. On the restart, though, I started moving back up quickly. The car was working well and I got back up to 10th when a few of guys got together again and I had no where to go on the track. This time I went back to 17th, and there were only about 8 laps left. I pushed forward again and finished 13th. I was a little disappointed because I think we had a top three car, but that’s racin’. Plus, it was cool to think that out of more than 280 cars that came to Tulsa for this race, I finished 13th. Now we get ready for the actual season to begin for USAC. Our first race is on February 15th and 16th at Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix, AZ. Check out my website for updates and schedules.
Talk To You Soon,
Cole
#71