To say this racing didn’t go as planned this year is an understatement. We were supposde to start the year like this last race, not finish the season that way.

Between Brainerd and St Louis , Mike and Ron spent some time really focusing on our clutch management system. Mike knew something was not quite right, but we couldn’t figure it out. What they found was we were having an accumulator problem. The accumulator holds the fluid that moves the clutch system. We had o-rings leaking air by. So when we would start the weekend it would actually work okay but as we used it the oil in the accumulator would start to get whipped up and become thicker in substance and cause the clutch to slow down.

With this now figured out, we were hoping the car would respond to our changes and run a little better than it has.

Unfortunately, we kind of had to start over with clutch tune up ,so in Q1 we made the best guess possible. The clutch was a little to quick and caused tire smoke. In Q2 we slowed it down a little and ran our mid 90. In Q3 we starting speeding it back up again and ran a 3.87. For Q4 we speed the clutch up a little more but unfortunately the fuel line on the barrel valve vibrated a little loose. This caused us to lose some fuel and slow down a little and run a 3.89. We were trying to run better than a 87 and the data showed us that we were on track to do that. So for E1, our game plan was to go up there and try to run 81-83. When the car launched, it wore a lot of clutch early which would of been okay but you fuel pump wasn’t quite big enough and the motor went a little lean burning up a cylinder. When that happened it caused a little trash to get under the intake valve and caused the blower pop. All in all, we had a great weekend and left us optimistic for next year!

I would to thank my family and friends for the support and help on the car. Without them this dream isn’t possible!