Soap Box Saturday

Alex finished sixth place in Stock today. His first defeat was against Tajha Goodwin-Lowell, who won first place today; his second defeat was against Kirstin Vorpahl, who won second place today! That put him in a runoff for fifth and sixth against Kallan Wehrmeister; he lost the runoff.

He had seven runs down the hill and had fun; he also drove well. In fact, in one run we decided to break to the outside, and Alex pulled that move off perfectly, breaking smoothly, and at just the right point. Our times seem to be very consistently .5 seconds behind first and second place, and .3 seconds behind the next several places. I am convinced that this consistency means that we DO have a decent car setup, and that Alex is driving well. If there was a problem with his driving, he would not be as consistent. Because we have disassembled and rebuilt the car so many times, the same is true of the car's setup.

I am convinced that our primary problem is Alex's size. His shoulders don't fit into the Stock body, and he easily outweighs many of his fellow drivers by 30 pounds. Although the cars all weigh the same, this difference means that THEY get to put 30 pounds of steel plates in their floorboard, thereby lowering their center of gravity. Hopefully this problem will be rectified late next Spring when he is old enough to race Super Stocks; the cars are larger, and the drivers are closer to Alex's size.

Alex says he had fun today when he was racing, but not so much after he was done racing; nevertheless, he did come running across the park at one point to tell me that he had caught the Red Gyarados in his Pokemon video game . . . He is still talking about that, and I think it may have been the highlight of his day.

We have checked in to the Rodeway Inn in north Salem, and are looking forward to another day of racing tomorrow.

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