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Heat #1 Finish: 2nd
Heat #2 Finish: 2nd
Feature Start: 2nd
Feature Finish: 3rd
Number Of Karts: 4
Practice recap:
The goal for practice was for Michael to help fellow heavy driver Matt Brehm in preperation for the nights races. After a few laps behind Matt, Michael passed and never looked back. "I saw some things I told Matt he could work on, the most important is arcing into the corners," said Michael. In front of a group of friends and family, the scene was set for potentially the first win of the year. "I almost hate having them out here because now I'm going to try even harder for that first win, and would hate to make a mistake trying to push it to the limit," said Michael before the races. Also touched upon was the rift between him and Joe Milazzo from last week. "We talked before today's practice and sort of burried the hatchet so to speak, I explained what I saw and he agreed that's what happened. We'll just try to go out and race clean tonight, a lot of that stuff is said in the heat of the moment, so when you can cool off you can look at things fully," said Michael. "Lap traffic got me last week, racing out here is fun and I appriciate the give and take that happens on a normal basis with these other drivers," said Joe.
Heat recap:
With many of the medium and heavy drivers not present, track owner Bob Trimper decided to combine all classes into one big race. "We're gonna try this since there are only nine guys and we have ten karts. This way everyone gets some good racing action," said Bob before the heats. Starting second in the heavy class, which in reality was seventh overall, Michael got to second, was able to pass Joe for first, but was passed on the last lap by Joe and some medium drivers. The only note was Eric Zwirlein got a bad kart that ruined his chances of a heat win, "that kart was junk, I should have just pulled off," said Eric. "That's the first time I've had a truely bad kart, maybe that can be the last," continued Eric.
For the second heat Michael was put third in the heavys and eighth overall, where he pretty much stayed until trouble with a lap kart got Joe bumped to third as Eric went on for the win. "The seat wasn't right for this race, it was too far back so I was really fighting the handling," said Michael. "Huh, looks like we're gonna have the same kart next race, this should be fun," noted Michael after seeing the line up of the karts prior to the feature race.
Feature recap:
The feature saw some fierce racing, but not between the usual heavy drivers. A few of the medium drivers mixed it up with the heavys and that allowed Eric to get a lead while Joe and Michael tried getting through the traffic to reach him. Once the mediums were dispatched, it was down to Joe and Michael, with Michael right on Joe's tail. "I could gain on him so much in turns two and three, then he'd just pull away on the straights," comment Michael. Every bit of time Joe could gain on the straight aways was lost through those corners until when trying to pass fellow heavy driver Matt Brehm, Michael lost a ton of time which proved to be the difference. "This experiment was good and bad, I enjoyed the racing in the pack, but angonized over where Eric and Joe were. Plus I would like to have seen what we could have done without the time lost passing other karts. I know it's more exciting for the fans, but I lost a ton of time dealing with slow karts," said Michael after the race. "It was interesting out there, I just was able to clear people faster than Joe and Mike and that was the difference," said a victorious Eric after the race.