NASKART PRO RACING SERIES powered by ROYAL PURPLE RACE REPORT

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Will post a race report tomorrow.....unless Team ROCKHARD Racing would like to put one up! :-) HHmm...well guess not.

 

so here goes:

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The NASKART Pro Racing Series powered by ROYAL PURPLE, returned to Thunderhill for the 3rd round of a 21 race season.And once again, with Thunderhill changing up their format with no qualifying or heat races except for certain weekends of the year, the NASKART Pro Racing Series had to roll with the changes also. Since there is a Bonus point for either a Heat race winner or fastest qualifyer, it was determined that the Race grid and Bonus point would be determined by times from both the daytime practices combined. But since the scales were not setup for teh first practice, all times were to come from the 2nd practice of the day. The 2nd practice saw all the competitors go out for practice and to try and set their fast times. But when practice was over, only 2 drivers took the right turn to the tech shde to officially weight in for the bonus point. Those 2 drivers were the #1 Austin Architectural Graphics kart of Mike Steinman and the #24 of team ROCKHARD Racing's Chris Terry. Everyone else went back to the pits before they realized they forgot to weigh in. So after times were posted from practice, it was Chris Terry with the fastest time and gaining the bonus point.

 

For the main, the grid was still set up from practice times, but inverted. So this put the rookie Matt McDade #5 on pole with outside pole going to Robert Carr #27. 2nd row had 2010 champion #1 Mike Steinman inside with his teammate #07 Megan Smith outside. 3rd row had Team ROCKHARD Racing Teammates and winners of the first 2 races of the Season, #88 Kaleb Kreis inside and #29 Marty Kreis outside. 4th row had Team ROCKHARD Racings #24 Chris Terry inside and the #42 TARGET kart of Chris Birmingham

outside. 5th row had 2 Smitty Built Karts from the NASKART Racing Xperience with Lyndon Kirk #11 on the inside and rookie Jason Marshall #20 on the outside. So when the green flag flew, it was the inside line that was first into turn 1, with #5 McDade leading with Steinman #1, Kreis #88 and Terry#24 nose to tail thru turns 1 and 2. But down the backstretch the 2 ROCKHARD Teammates of Kaleb Kreis and Chris Terry went to the outside around the #27 of Robert Carr to battle for the lead with McDade and Steinman. This shuffled the #27 of Carr from the front to the back of the pack by the time they finished lap 1. McDade lead lap 1 on the inside but outside was Kaleb Kreis in a very close 2nd. Steinman third pushing McDade and Terry fourth pushing Kreis. on lap 3 Kaleb made his way around the outside of McDade who was starting to experience motor problems. Steinman getting a big bump draft from behind and realizing McDade was having issues went to the inside of McDade and brought the hardcharging karts of Lyndon Kirk #11 and Jason Marshall #20 along with him and set out to chase down the #88 of Kreis. On lap 5, Steinman #1 went under Kreis to take the lead with the #11 of Kirk and the #20 of Marshall in tow and shuffled the #88 of Kreis back to 4th. On lap 7 Kirk #11 made his way past Steinman as well as Marshall and dropped Steinman #1 back to 3rd. The order stayed this way until lap 10 when #20 Marshall took over the top spot from Kirk. On lap 11 the #88 of Kaleb Kreis got around Steinman for 3rd and 2 laps later the #24 of Terry made his way past as well dropping Steinman back to 5th. On lap 15, Kirk #11 got back by the #20 of Marshall with help from the #24 of Terry and the #1 of Steinman, thus shoving the #20 of Marshall and the #88 of Kreis back to 4th and 5th as the Competition Yellow came out.

 

On the restart, Kirk 311 held the lead but Steinman #1 got passed the #24 of Terry and stuck to the bumper of Kirk to help Kirk lead the next few laps. The #20 of Marshall then got around #24 Terry and now made it a 3 kart train at the front with Team ROCKHARD Racing now teamming up in positions 4th thru 6th to try and train by the leaders. On lap 21 of 27 the ROCKHARD karts of #24 Terry and #88 got passed the #20 of Marshall dropping him back to 5th, while Kirk and Steinman were still out front.

Then on lap 23 the Team ROCKHARD Teammates started battling each other with the #88 of Kreis now into 3rd in front of Terry #24. But on lap 24 the #20 of Marshall showed he had a strong kart and went around the Team ROCKHARD Teammates to take over 3rd and draft up to Kirk and Steinman. And on lap 26 Marshall got around Steinman for 2nd and was battling Kirk for the lead.

Down the backstraight #20 Marshall was able to make the pass on Kirk and hold onto the win while Steinman #1 held the inside line and held off the charging kart of Kreis #88 to finish 3rd.

 

In post tech though the #20 of Marshall came in underweight and was DQ'ed thus elevating everyone up 1 position. The final finishing order was #11 Lyndon Kirk your winner, With Steinman #1 finishing 2nd. Team ROCKHARD Racing finishing 3rd thru 5th with the #88 of Kaleb, the #24 of Terry and the #29 of Marty Kreis.

 

The top 6 finished within 1 second of each other for one of the closest finishes in NASKART racing history.

 

Post tech inspection found the top 3 to be legal in weight and fuel.

 

 

Round 4 is next...again at Thunderhill Raceway on April 3nd. SEE YA THERE!!!