We arrived home from Macon, IL at 4am Monday, June 24th. The Burris Summer Shootout was on schedule
for Friday and Saturday, the 21st and 22nd. We left Friday morning and arrived at Macon
Speedway, geared up to do some racing.
After a rain delay, racing was underway.
Mason started with a few laps of practice, going into qualifying and
finally the feature race. He was the 10th
kart on the track in his class, Jr 1, for qualifying order. His time sat him in 5th position
for the feature. The race started single
file and got off to a bad start with a caution not even one lap in. The race director decided they would restart
the race from the beginning, which would put Mason in 5th place, his
qualifying position determined by his lap times. Well, at least that’s how it was supposed to
go. We and I’m pretty sure almost
everyone else that was witnessing the event, we dumfounded at the order in which
they re-lined up the kids. I couldn’t
figure out for the life of me what happened when they put Mason into the 10th
position. At these large events,
however, there is nothing that can really be done about an error like this and
what’s done is done. They restarted the
race and Mason got up to 5th place.
Another caution came out and again, he was lined up in the wrong
position. When all was said and done,
the official results put him finishing 5th. Needless to say, we were quite a bit
discouraged to have driven all that way to have the race be so messed up. We did our best to shrug it off and prepared
for Saturday’s events. We arrived at the
track nice and early and got everything ready to go. Practice started and we made it through
qualifying for one of his classes before more rain hit. This time it didn’t let up and we didn’t get
to race. Officials postponed the events
for Sunday. The short amount of time he
did have on the track, we struggled. We
just couldn’t find any speed to get where we needed Mason to be. He’s times were consistent, just consistently
slower than the other kids. After much
deliberation and chatting with our peers, we began to doubt the decision we
made of purchasing the new chassis… maybe
we should have went with a different brand…
where are we going to get the money to purchase the chassis we need to
be competitive? A million different
scenarios went though our heads but we knew we were stuck. As a team, we made the decision to make a
couple big changes to the setup for Sunday’s races. After all, what did we have to lose? After Friday’s events, we pretty much knew we
weren’t contenders for the big money that was on the line this weekend. We decided to just treat the weekend as a
practice for the Burris Thunder Tour as there weren’t any points on the
line. Sunday rolled around and the
officials decided to race the big money races first, in case of more rain. So Mason began the day with the Jr 1 Pro
class. He qualified in 6th
position with barely any difference in times between the 3rd-6th
place karts. They were all very, very
close. We were pretty darn happy and
since Mason generally races better than he qualifies, we felt our chances of a
top 3 were quite good. He went out for
his race and as his was running in 5th place, was involved in a
crash. He made it another full lap
around the track when his kart died.
Rick took the starter out to restart him, but it was no use. The carburetor bolt pulled out from the motor. This race was over for him. Luckily, there were plenty of people around
to loan us the tools and help us with the repair to get it fixed for his last
race, Jr 1, where he qualified in 2nd! We couldn’t believe it! He was going to start the race in 2nd
place, in front of the best drivers in his class! Let me tell you, poor Mason was so nervous starting
that race. (Probably almost as nervous
as his mother that was about to throw up during the pace lap.) Mason was dancing around the pit and so
happy. It was nice to see him that way
as we were beginning to see him lose confidence in himself and us as his “crew”
due to the struggles we had at this event and previous races. Before he started the race, I felt as though
we had already won due to the great advances we had made from the Friday
before. Had we went home right then, we
would have been content with our results.
During the race, there were many cautions and the laps were cut down to
once again try to avoid rain. Mason was
able to stay in 2nd place during the race, with Sam Johnson ahead of
him and Cole Falloway hot on his trail. We know we still have a lot of work to do and
Mason has a lot to learn but just knowing that we have the capabilities, tools
and resources for Mason to be competitive means the world to us.
