October 23-24, 2009- Ennis, Texas


We headed West about 20 hours to the state of Texas for what is actually our first race of the season.  It starts in October along with the Battle For the Belt.  Then we are off for 5 months (till March).
                                 
We ran into a few obstacles preparing for the Ennis, Texas race. We were preparing the motor “The Grinch” (that’s the name of the motor) for the bike when a crack was found in the motor which put us quite a bit behind. Which caused us to prepare “Dr. Seuss” AKA Doc and put that in the bike. Then we machined a new set of cases to fix up “The Grinch” and tucked the parts for “The Grinch” away hoping not to need them. We arrived in Ennis, late Thursday evening, got everything set up for Friday. Friday morning everything was looking good, the air was very crisp (to us Florida folk) it was cold.
                                   
Went up for the first qualifying and basically over powered the track. (opps tuning error) I took the data from the first qualifying pass, figured out the error and corrected it and made proper changes. 2nd qualifying pass was at night time (the sun was down at this point, which meant it was even colder now) A lot of teams were having a lot of trouble the first 15 feet of the track. We adjusted the tune up to accommodate for the first 15 feet.

With the help of Mr Walt Timblin lining me up the bike left real well, proceeded down the track to about 220 feet before the finish line and “The Grinch” started to show it’s true character and rear it’s ugly head. (haha) Not knowing if I was in the field because only the top 16 qualify to race and at that point I was qualified # 21 from the previous pass even though I knew the motor was coming apart, I had to stay in it all the way to the finish line to try to secure a spot in the top 16. 
                                   

                                    
Really what happened was an on going problem we’ve had with cylinder failure. Even with that the bike still performed quite well with these conditions and we ran our career best with a 4.21 qualifying us in the # 2 spot. According to the time slip numbers it should have went between a 4.18-4.19.
Arriving back in the pits after the pass, the full amount of damage had been discovered. 
                                   

A special thanks to Jeff Reel (back at the shop) for preparing those replacement cases so that the team could pull an all nighter to prepare our second motor (“Dr Seuss AKA Doc) for a motor swap so we could compete on Saturday. We skipped third qualifying since we were secure in the top half of the 16 bike field to finish up the motor swap.
                                   

                                    
We had Coodee Thomas # 15 qualifier first round. In preparing for first round I had made a tuning decision looking back was not the proper decesion. I took power out of the bike trying to preserve the life of the motor to run a mid 4.20. In doing that it upset the chassis and cause the power to come in very aggressive at mid track causing the bike to spin the tire and make a harsh move towards the center line. I knew that Coodee would have a good package so a mistake like this would send us home. After moving to the center line I had to roll out of the throttle twice to straighten it up. I proceeded to run a loosing 4.33. Over all the weekend was a mixture of ups and downs. We ran our career best E.T., at the same time reenforcing what we need to address to fix our motor program during the off season. We qualified # 2 with a 4.21 and lost first round with a 4.33.

I would like to say a special thanks to:
NationalGuard.com
Schnitzracing.com
Voltphreak.com
Timblin Chassis
BVR

My prayer to my Lord and Savior, when we go to these events is that the Lord would grant us safety and it was amazing when we were leaving the track this weekend they were loading up Jason Hamstra ProExtreme car in the horrific condition the car was in he was at the track the very next day with not even a broken bone. God is amazing. We can say what we want about how we think we are in control, but when it comes down to it, we are in control of nothing. Only God is in control. The second part of my prayer that God would be able to use us as a team to glorify Him and hopefully we do that through those ups and downs. ~Monte


It was also very nice to have lots of friends and family there to cheer us on!

                                      

Here is the ADRL 2010 Schedule

2010 National Guard ADRL Tour Schedule

(Before) This is what happens to your golf cart (After) when a PMX Team has no bike to work on.