November 25-26, 2016

We arrived at the O'Reilly Indoor National Kart Championships in Batesville, Miss., with high hopes. This was a big race - the best of the best in this part of the country were here. Since we had never raced here before, we had a lot to learn and had to learn fast. But we had fresh engines and Tomar Engineering rebuilt our clutches and they were ready to lay some power to the rear tires!

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Elliott was sitting out this race since he was a bit skeptical about the crowd - it could be rough - so he chose to work on the kart. Franklin eagerly prepared his Outcast Kart for Clone Super Heavy for Friday and Saturday's race.

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Friday

First Practice.

The first day was met with optimism but after a good first practice, we knew it was a bad sign. Being fast in first practice is bad because although we were fast, we were fast for those track conditions. But the track would gather grip and speed up and we would slow down if we didn't make big changes.

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Second Practice.

Second practice was not very good. Franklin complained the tires we were using locked down the kart to the track. The kart handled fine but was slow. It was time for a different set of tires.

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Qualifying.

There were two rounds of qualifying and the ten fastest karts were locked into the race. If you didn't make it in the first round, you had a chance to make it in the second round and again the ten fastest in second round were added to the 20-kart field. With 48 karts in the class, we needed to find some speed. First round was not good. We qualified 26th of 48 and the kart was just slow. We had another set up tires that we thought would do the trick.

 

We went back to the trailer and got ready for second round qualifying. With some time on the scales and a new set of tires on the kart, we headed back to the grid for second round qualifying. Franklin hit the track and the kart was faster - but not fast enough. We qualified 13th and missed to event by just .009 seconds. That was a tough pill to swallow. We're used to running up front but racing can be tough and when you can't figure out what you need, you find yourself in the trailer watching others race. So we had our work cut out for us. We had to go watch the races, see what attitude the front runners' kart had. We watched the races and the crew chief scrutinized the fastest karts - and a light bulb went off. We had work to do.

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Saturday

​Friday night was spent in the trailer picking a choosing a special set of tires. We didn't have EXACTLY what we needed but we had something close. The hot box was turning tires and the air compressor hummed all evening. Saturday morning saw a continuation of Friday night's effort as we thrashed on the chassis and tires and make some BIG changes. Fingers crossed.

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First Practice.

The track was still in good shape from Friday night and had a defined black groove from rubber so we knew if we were fast on Saturday morning, we'd be heading in the right direction. And we were. Franklin came off the track after practice and said it was night and day better from Saturday. We had reduced left side weight, decreased nose weight, decreased crossweight, moved the seat back and put together a set of tires that we thought would be a good set for a few laps but were concerned we didn't have enough chemicals in them to last long runs.

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Second Practice.

Second practice went well and the kart was better - but not quite. Time for a few more adjustments.

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Qualifying.

Finally! We hit the set-up, not perfect, but closer. Franklin drove well and after having to deal some slower traffic, he set a time quick enough to be 10th fastest! No second round qualifying for us - we're in the race!

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Feature.

Franklin started tenth of 20 karts and after the green dropped, he made a pass on one kart as another front runner dropped out and he found himself in eighth place just a few laps in. The tires suddenly "gave up" as the chemical burned out of them and he began to slip back through the pack and then suffered an issue as a piece of the engine came off and he parked the kart. Franklin was credited with 16th overall. Not bad after the first day we had.

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Batesville was in the books! We had a great time and learned a lot that we can take to the next big indoor race adventure. We'll try again next year and Elliott will be back behind the wheel.