Tracking Glory with Hal Martin

This past weekend, I raced at the famed Darlington Raceway, also known as “The Lady in Black.” The track derives its “Lady in Black” nickname from the track’s painted white walls that turn black during a race from all the cars that scrape or crash against them. I knew the track would be difficult to get a hold of after talking with some of my competitors, and it certainly didn’t disappoint.

The schedule for the race was all crammed into one day this week. Practice, qualifying, and the race all took place on Friday, making for a long and exhausting day. The day started with my first laps around the 1.366-mile raceway. My first few laps were very exciting and a little intimidating. Darlington Raceway is configured unlike any other track we race on, it is sort of egg-shaped with turns one and two having a larger radius allowing for cars to carry more speed. Turns three and four are tighter and make for abrupt braking and slower speeds. After the first 20 laps, I began getting much more comfortable with the track and started dialing the chassis into what I needed to have a good car to race.

Qualifying didn’t go quite as we expected. I took to the track and put in a solid lap, but unfortunately, it was only fast enough to qualify in the 34th position. I was hoping that the car would race better that night, but with practice taking place in the daytime earlier in the morning, I knew the track would have different grip levels at night. I just hoped that we had made the proper adjustments to accommodate for the different track condition.

When the race started, I quickly worked my way up into the top 25, and had settled into position to ride until the first pit stop to make necessary adjustments to get the car driving better. After the first pit stop, the adjustments we made to the car made it driver better, but soon thereafter, the car started reacting very erratically, making it very difficult to drive. In one instance, the car would not want to turn very well, and then would get very loose making it want to spin out. I kept control of the car and fought those conditions for the rest of the race. After the race, we examined under the hood to find that an oil line had leaked causing oil to be thrown onto my tires, which explained the erratic handling characteristics. I finished the race in 29th position. It was not where we were hoping to finish after the promising start, but the oil line problem was an unexpected problem that occurred. My next race is the History 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. This will be my first time racing at this track, and I am very much looking forward to it!

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