8/6/2022: Riverhead Raceway - Sara Sylvester INEX National Qualifier, 8/13/2022: Riverhead Raceway - I Love America Night

It was a hot, humid day, with clear blue skies and a nice breeze rolling through the pits. During the past week, Ed made a few tweaks to the car and we were excited to see what his Super Secret Shop Shenanigans™ would do for the car. After the first time out on the track, it was clear that they didn't affect the car negatively, since we were 23rd fastest out of 34 cars that hit the track, with a 14.039sec lap.

Since the day's events were an INEX National Qualifier race, starting spots in the feature would be determined by time trials and all rounds of practice would get merged into one list in the Speedhive app, where I check our lap times. The track had to use a different set of scales today, since the heat was messing with the usual ones, and the super awesome track officials came around to give everyone a heads up. This was particularly helpful since its incredibly difficult to hear all of the announcements in the pits from the PA System over the hum of generators and random engines rolling by. After our second time out on track, we settled in at 28th fastest out of a 36 car field. Surprisingly we didn't lose any time between the practices and Ed was able to hit another fast lap of 14.057sec.

Now we had a little bit of a break before we had to go through tech and park our cars in 'impound' before our time trials. We were 29th out of 36 after the time trials happened, luckily keeping the car straight both laps this time, but our lap times stayed very consistent with where we had been all day. Ed was also having to deal with a tight condition in the car for the first time, meaning the car did not want to turn. Another round of 'hurry up and wait' before we headed back out to the track for the consi and our last chance to make the feature that night. Whatever happens, we ran some of our fastest laps yet, and the car is still in one piece.

We ran some decent laps (fast time 14.1sec) in the consi, but unfortunately due to a minor on track incident, we were not able to make the feature. Post race, another driver (the other one involved in the incident) came over to our pit and back-handedly tried to offer 'advice' while simultaneously trying to blame Ed for him (the other guy) running out of talent, not only this week, but apparently the week prior as well. Methinks someone needs to look up the definition of racing again. Our night was done shortly after the features were run, since we needed to get back home to take care of the dog, since Mom had to pull a double shift.

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This week was the first time in a while that was what I would call ideal racing weather. Not too hot, zero clouds in the sky, and a slight breeze. We're back to heat races this week, but more importantly, we want to see how our car handles in slightly cooler temperatures. The guys we bought the car from all say that the car is usually faster as it gets cooler, so let's see where we are now, with the improvements we've already made!

We got into the pits around 1:30, and got ourselves situated as normal, but had a bit of down time before things got rolling at 3. We were the 3rd division to go out in the practice cycles so we got a little extra time too.

Practice 1 was cut short after a car dropped oil and we found it. But luckily Ed was able to keep it off the wall. Practice 2 was delayed by a different car dropping fluid around the entire track, and then cut short after the first car that had dropped fluid got into the wall.🤦‍♀️ So we've had a total of 7 green flag laps on the track and 3 laps that were actually reasonable. Guess it's time to prep for the heat races with no actual practice or time for adjustments. 🤷‍♀️

The heat race went very well for being our first real hot laps of the day. We started and finished in 7th out of 9 cars, and due to a surprisingly low car count, they took top 8 cars from each of the 3 heat races, so we made the feature! There was no consi due to the total car count being under 30 cars. We'll be starting back in 20th, out of 26 cars, but that's fine with us, we made it at all. We could have finished the heat in 6th if we didn't get caught behind a lapped car which allowed another car to get by us in the last few turns.

After opening ceremonies and the Mini Stock race, it was time for us to head out on to the track for our 20 lap feature event! We started the race in 20th and survived the whole race to finish on the lead lap and in 18th! It was a great night overall, with many more notes for the notebook, and some new friends down at the track.

Sorry for the lack of pictures this update. between me forgetting my phone charger the first week and the insanity that is my life, I just wanted to make sure y'all got the blog post.

As always, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok for updates, clips, and random auto related stuff! A huge thank you too all our sponsors for helping to make this all possible!

~Sam (I can be found at KazulStudios on all social media)