A friend once observed that "racing has a way of making sure that the highs never make up for all the lows." There's just no way you can endure the weekly hassles of getting a race car ready, problems with transportation, broken parts, stupid mistakes, questionable competitors, rough driving, bad policies, and more, and then expect one good night of racing to wipe it all away. What's worse, throw in a bad night of racing or two, and it's not uncommon to find yourself in a bit of depression about your racing program.
At the risk of sounding like a complainer, I'll let the Saturday Night Buildup driver, Bob Carpenter, ramble on a bit about the subject: "I don't know. I'm just getting to the point where I'm starting to think it's not worth the hassle. We've suffered the usual maladies, like a power steering pump failure that saw us run around the track in last place, trying to keep up. We've had flat tires, bigger problems with guys wanting to fight after the races, and we've been frustrated by the megabuck teams winning every week. I'll tell you, I was sitting in the car prior to the main event starting, and I was thinking to myself, I really don't want to be here, hey that's not a good thing."
The ultimate screwup was this past weekend. We showed up at the track three hours before race time to find the Street Stock main event lining up. You see, it was the fair race weekend, and the races were held earlier than every other weekend. Somehow, we didn't know. We missed the previous race, so we didn't hear the announcement during the drivers meeting about the earlier start time. Our schedule doesn't mention start times (maybe other schedules do, but not the one that's on our refrigerator). Talk about an emotional deflator-we went home with our tails between our legs and spent the evening building a model airplane in the garage. After moaning awhile about spending the past few days preparing for the race and then missing it over a stupid time mix-up, we just stopped talking about it altogether and found something else to do (the airplane kit).
As mentioned earlier, the previous week was a downer too. We have been struggling with our power steering pump and have replaced it two or three times. This time, we bought a brand-new pump to solve the problem, but the problem got worse. Instead of just being hard to steer out of the pits, the pump blew its guts out, and the car was virtually impossible to steer. Every bump slammed the steering wheel in the opposite direction, and Bob fought to stay in control. He commented that the fans that night probably thought he stunk. All this happened just after the car was on the cover of Circle Track Magazine and featured on The Learning Channel's "The Secret Life of Stock Car Racing" show. They should have been the best of times.
I imagine every racer goes through these down periods. We'll have to see if we can break out of it with a great finish next Saturday night. Hey, I don't mean to be a downer, but we've always tried to relay the reality of Saturday-night racing here in Circle Track, and that's just the way it is right now.