Off to the races...or something like that!

So after getting their licences and race log (where they log their times and positions) we were..................ready-ish??
So race weekend can be either Sat/Sun or just Sat. But either way, it requires a lot of stuff to go on so we tend to get out there Friday night to do pre-race stuff and stay Saturday night to do post-race stuff. You know, important stuff like:

- On race days you have to have fresh gas from a specific gas station (at some point after the racing if you place they *sniff* your fuel). The sniff test makes sure your numbers are within a certain range ensuring you didn't add something super special to make your kid a racing champion.

Well, in order to get fresh fuel - that means at some point you need to drain your little racing team's gas tanks. I tend to do this Friday night and then add just a smidgeon for practice Saturday morning (a little goes a LONG way).
When they are doing Qualifying and doing full tech (I'll explain this some other day), you actually have to loosen your float bowl and take off your some other kinda bowl that I don't remember the name....but I can take it off! =)

- Find a parking spot and hook up power - hopefully not to one of the outlets that is blown. I think they pruposely wait til newcomers figure this out for themselves so they can laugh about it.

- Make sure your kids have all their safety gear - so far we have been pretty good about that but bad about things like oh, the baby's shoes, the crockpot for dinner, etc...

- If safety is super nice, they will check you out Friday night so you can avoid the mad rush Saturday morning. This has been a saving grace for us running two cars.
Safety checks stuff like:
Do your kids have all their gear aka are you at least attempting to make them safe while encouraging them to go as fast as they possibly can at their age?
Does the gear and seatbelts have the proper safety rating and not expired (seatbelts only last 2 years!) aka are you gonna catch your kid on fire? or will they fly out when testing the roll cage?
Do you have enough bolts in certain places/are they tight aka is crap gonna fly off your car and wound somebody else's child (this is not proper strategy)
Are all holes in your floor pan covered (w/ painters tape if necessary) aka are you gonna catch your kid on fire? or have your kid fall out the bottom?
Do your gas/brake pedals work properly aka go means go, stop kid stop!!!

...and probably some other stuff I don't remember.

Getting our safety sheet filled out.

- And fix everything you forgot was broken when you put the car away about a week or so ago or broke in practice a few days ago...

- Say hi to all your track friends you haven't seen in a week/discuss all your problems w/ your car/your kids/your parking spot/the track gossip.

And when you're done with all those necessary things, there may be some time left to practice...a little.
It is customary to wander to staging and wonder just how in the hell everyone else is getting their kids car/kid to drive so fast.

Because we usually have like Friday night baseball, we generally don't get there til late and generally dont get in to bed til pretty late.

Driver's Training

Well, you can't race novice class until you take novice driver's training. So, we immediately had to have all our equipment in time for the novice class to begin.

While we were looking for a car for Kira and such, Kira and I were butting heads on her driving at all. At first she was all excited but then I realized she was going to be gone for most the race season since she leaves all summer to NC - race capitol of the world --- where she can't race at all.
So I started to think of not letting her race at all. She was also being a 14 year old pain and being picky about what color of car she should have.... So  that's it, decided. Not racing, not worth the cost and her grumpy attitude.
Enter temper tantrum #1: "My brother gets to do it! You love him more than me! You'll pay for him but not for me!"  I offer to pay for something back in NC like soccer camps (IF she can talk her dad into taking her to anything productive during the summer). No, not fair.
A few weeks go by.....
Fine, you can race too. I am now thinking Zachary can grow into her car. Same set-up. No real financial loss.
Enter temper tantrum # 2: "I won't ever see my friends or hang-out! I'll be too busy and I already don't see them in the summer!" Well, there is no way you are staying home all day on the weekends by yourself so, I don't care if you race but you are coming with us.
"Fine! You can make me race, but you can't make me like it!"
Deal.

I hate you with my eyes!

     
After getting who was racing out of the way, we were in a scramble to find a car her size. Don't worry, we found one.
Driver's training (aka Novice Training) was about 1.5 months of every weekend driving followed by a graduation race. I think there were about 15 junior novices (ages 5-8) and there were 3 senior novices (ages 9-16).
Our novice training happened to be completely in the rain and snow. It sucked bad. We were all wet and miserable and the rv smelled like wet kids. Blech!
There is probably so much to say about novice training, but not enough words to aptly describe everything going on.
So I'll sum it up this way -
      the kids learned how and what to wear, the parents learned how to put it on them
      the kids learned how to make the car go/stop/and pass, the parents learned how to push off cars/ detangle wrecks/work corners
     the kids learned all the other kids names/parents/cars, the parents learned to not worry so much cause their kid was off playing with another racer
     the kids learned flags --- yeah, I did too

Key learning points -
   Air is good to have in tires BEFORE you go on the track - otherwise you'll hear a gawd awful scraping and a lot of whining out of a senior novice.
  Turning the fuel ON at the gas tank helps the car go (this goes hand and hand with put gas in before you take the track)
   Listen to everyone, you need all the advice/help you can get.

Novice Graduation Class 2012

 

     

About the Equipment

So once you decide you want to race, cost becomes a factor. Always the first question is, "How'd you get into that?" immediately followed by "Is it expensive?"
Well, cutting to the chase, it's can be mildly expensive to insanely expensive depending on you. Some people go to the track with the bare minimum. Some people race (run) one car, some people have 3 or 4 per kid. Some people go to the track looking like they are on the NASCAR circuit (via Washington?).

So I will tell you the bare minimum gear -- then fill you in on what we thought made sense, and be we I mean I because the kids had no say.

Equipment

The 2 Fiser cars on the right are ours. The one on the left is a friends.

Quarter Midget

You can find a car w/ an engine and pit cart anywhere from $1500 to $6500 for package deals.
** Typical, you'll pay about $2500 - $3500 ish unless you get lucky
*** Lots of people are super nice in racing and will give you all kinds of spare things you dont understand why you need until much later. There are, of course, sometimes buyer beware instances where people are selling you junk. =(

A note on cars - often you can sell them for the same range you bought them. Kind of like borrowing. =)

A way to get the car to the track

You'll see all sorts of set-ups at the track - RVs and trailers, trucks and trailers, pickup trucks w/ the cars in the bed (yes, they fit)
Most everyone has some sort of canopy situation for keeping dry/shaded.

Driver's Safety Gear

Helmet - protect the noggin'
Neck collar - support the weight of the helmet (Z has a 2 lb helmet cause he's got a fathead)
Wrist restraints - Keep the hands in during an accident
Gloves - Fire rated
Jacket - Fire rated

** You can also get a full drivers suit but dont have to. If you just have the jacket, then they have to wear jeans and closed toed shoes.


So, we ended up having to get 2 cars, one for each because they are different sizes. I really balked at that but then decided that because  of their spacing and they can only drive until 16, Zachary could grow into Kira's and Elena could grow into Zachary's and I'd get my money's worth - plus be able to recoup some cost when I sell them sometime.
** When I was looking for cars I looked for the same brand so the car parts would be interchangeable and I wasn't having to try to figure out two designs.

I went with the RV and trailer combo mainly because of the baby. It's really super hard trying to do this with the baby and I wanted place to be able to have her nap, get down, have toys, etc. I didn't get an outrageous one but it was very worth it and I don't have any regrets yet.
Well, maybe just that I don't know how to drive a trailer very well and my yard and HOA don't allow for RVs and trailers.

Ride Day #2

After the first Ride Day we went home and did A LOT of talking and googling about racing and if we thought we could take it on and if the kids liked it enough, the schedule, the cost, kids with attitudes, etc, etc. Somewhere between the first ride day and second ride day, we decided we were going to do it -- more on that later.

So by the second ride day - we had an rv, trailer, and my son's car. (Yes, I mean we didn't have any such things before).

Zachary's car - a 76 Fiser

And, of course, like you always want to do when you find something cool to do ---- we invited all our friends to come out too. I think we brought three families out with us to the second ride day.

The actual ride day was the same set-up, but with more people this time. It was a long wait because we got there more toward the afternoon. The kids all had fun again and the best of all......
we thought we had some friends convinced to try the race season with us! YAAY!

After Ride Day #2 we had about a month or so to find my daughter's car. Yipes!

Our Ride Days

The track closest to our house (also referred to as your "home track") hosted two seperate ride days.
The first one was rescheduled so not so many people showed up. It was very laid back and exciting at the same time.
** I must pause now to interject that I had no idea about ANY racing whatsoever. And when I mean no racing, I mean NONE. No bike, motorbike, running, NASCAR, nothing! Okay, I had the concept of going around in the circle a bunch of times and saw a couple dragging for dollars on SPEED here and there. I don't think that counts.

I fully expected my 6 year old son to love ride day. He drove his Cadillac Escalade up and down our cul-de-sac, over curbs, through shrubs, in reverse. This is the same boy that whenever anyone came over, he would ask to see their car. Then when they took him out, he'd ask to see their engines. And if it was a girl that didn't know how to pop her hood, he'd find the release for her. He could tell me most makes of cars driving down the road at about 4 years old. No question, he was going to love it.

The big question?? My 14 year old daughter - the non-competitive one that hangs in group sports where no focus is directly on any one person. The one who barely said yes to ride day. *sigh*
Truth is, I NEEDED her to like it. First of all, there aren't too many activities that allow a 6 year old and 14 year old to participate together at the same place/time. Secondly, I am scared to death of her getting a real driver's license. In the back of my mom mind, I am thinking that maybe this would give her a little pedal and brake control and situational awareness (Please?!) before I have to pee my pants while trying to teach her to drive.


So we go to ride day...

The first ride day there werent too many people there so we kind of just wandered up unsure of ourselves. I think we paid like $20 or something a kid. They had cars for us to try and gear we could borrow. We had a basic, "this is what you have to wear/how to get in the car/where are the gas and brake orientation."
The kids went out on idle speed and did a couple laps. If they stayed straight - ish and seemed to be okay, the people on the track would stop them, chat with them, and ask if they wanted to go a little faster. Then theyd turn the idle up a bit. They did this a few more times and then came off the track.

As I said, I was totally not worried about my son's ability to keep a car on the track but luckily my daughter did too - with 0 prior experience but a few go kart runs!

So, of course my son thought it was fun but I was so unsure what my daughter would say. I pulled the helmet off her head and she said.... she loved it!

Well, let's try Track Day #2....

How We Got Started

When people find out the kids are racing one of the first questions is inevitably, "How'd you get into that?"

The truth is - I don't really know. I heard about the racing somewhere last year, when my youngest was just an infant. I can't remember where I heard of it but I googled it, found the track near our house - and then decided against it because it seemed like too much work with an infant. After that, I sort of put it out of my head as a fleeting thought.
Fast forward one year and after getting some personal business out of the way, I decided I needed something to bring our family as close as we could possibly be. The problem was figuring out what especially with three kids ranging from 1-14.
So I stumbled back to the racing site again and found out there was a "Ride Day" where you could try out. They had two ride days and we went to both and decided we would give it a go - more on Ride Day next.

Who We Are...

This page was created to help keep our family and friends updated on our racing adventures and hopefully to draw some more people into the racing world with us.

Walsh Racing

Our Drivers

Kira - 14 years old Senior Novice
Current Goal: move to Heavy Honda 120
Away from the track, Kira carries straight A- in 8th grade, plays 3 instruments, is in concert band, and participates in soccer and track.

Zachary - 6 years old Junior Novice
Current Goal: ribbons and trophies
Away from the track, Zachary wrestles and plays Little League baseball. He will be adding flag football to his schedule next year.

Support

Mom - handler/pit crew/cook/parts procurement/transportation/cheerleader
Current Goal: To learn enough to help the kids reach their goals and to keep sanity.

Elena - 2 years old  Cheerleader
Current Goal: To wear all equipment big brother and sister have, drive both cars, and go wherever she wants when she wants while eating lots of candy

Grandpa - pit crew/alternate handler