NTK - TSRS Race 3
This weekend at North Texas Karters, for the 3rd round of TSRS, Sally raced with 28 of the most competitive Lo206 drivers in Texas.
Friday
On practice day, Sally focused on mastering the track and finding a consistent pace. As the track has an unusual rhino grip surface, it was crucial that Sally and her team figure out how to take as much grip out of the kart as possible.
“The kart was loose in the morning and extremely grippy as the track got hotter during the day. This made it hard to consistently tune for the hotter sessions using what I felt based off of the morning warmups because the track changes so drastically. In fact, it got so grippy that my kart actually bicycled around turns, causing me to go up on two wheels.”
Saturday
On Saturday, Sally didn’t have the most promising qualifying as she ended up with no drafting partner in P12. However, she kept her head up and hoped for a better heat race.
In the first heat race, Sally got a clean start, but due to a red flag, the entire field had to stop racing and get out of their karts. Two drivers had a head on collision, leaving one with a broken leg and the other with a concussion.
“I saw the crash happen right in front of me. I swerved to avoid it, barely missing it by a few inches. After they red flagged us, we all got out of our karts and grouped up under the corner worker’s tent to discuss what happened. After the crash was cleared off the track, we were sent back to our karts to do a single file start.”
After standing in the 100 degree heat for 20 minutes, everyone got back in their karts and did a warm-up lap and restarted the race in a single file line. Sally got another clean start and finished the race in P11.
Sunday
Unfortunately, on the start of the second heat race, Sally was forced to drive through the grass due to some aggressive drivers. She lost a few positions, but was able to get back on track.
On the bright side, Sally was able to make up for the lost positions and ended up in P11.
Starting the main in 11th, Sally had a huge advantage as she would be taking the first corner on the inside. Lucky for her, she went from 11th to 3rd, avoiding a crash on the start that took out a large majority of the outside row.
For the first half of the race, Sally was driving in 3rd with Kelvin Xing pushing behind her. The two were trying to close the gap to the leaders, but unfortunately couldn’t catch them.
Towards the end of the race, Sally’s setup started getting over stuck as the track got gripper, causing her to lose some pace.
Ending the main event in P6, Sally was thrilled to have such a good race considering her starting position.
“Overall, it was a great main event! I’m super lucky to have made it through the race without any incidents as half the field didn’t even make it to the checkered.”
“I’d say this weekend was definitely a success because I learned so much about race-craft and setup! I can’t thank my dad and my sponsors enough for making this possible. Looking forward to the next race!”
June 26, 2022
