On December 22nd the Pete's Christmas Tree Farm 250 will be held at Fresno's Action Track, Sequoia Speedway. A total of 6 drivers....yes, 6 drivers, will enter 12 cars. There will be one personal car per driver plus one proxy car.

I will be driving my Kenseth #17 modified and Yoshi's #71, Jim Hicks Jr. will drive his #42 modified and a proxy entered #02 Lagano modified from Mike King. Sarah will driver her own #27 modified and the proxy entered #14 Stewart modified from Paul (PD2).

From Bakersfield will be John King driving his own #177 modified and a proxy entered #123 modified representing the Childrens Clinic of Bakersfield. Mr. Champion will be driving his own #111 FedEx modified and driving his #112 Alltel modified as a proxy car representing Valley Childrens Hospital. John Mears makes a return to my track with his #223 Marlboro Penske modified and offering the #222 Marlboro Penske modified as a proxy for hire.

All 12 cars will qualify and run heats where 6 will be eliminated. The remaining 6 will run a round of 3-on-3 heats where 2 more will be eliminated. The remaining 4 cars will race in the 250 lap main event.

The winner will pick up a Team Losi Mini-T RTR truck, valued at $100 and donated by King Hobbies, and a 5' pre lighted artificial Christmas Tree from Home Depot, valued at $35. This INCLUDES those who are proxy drivers, in other words if the car that is represented by Paul's proxy picks up the win then Paul can expect a late Christmas present to be delivered by FedEx (shipping courtesy of Mr. Champion).

If a proxy car wins the event the driver will be treated to 5 breakfasts or lunchs at Perko's Cafe in Fresno or IHOP in Bakersfield, up to $25 per meal, courtesy of Air Fresno.

Now this is awesome Pete!! Not just because I have a Proxy, but namely because of the name, the format, and what's up for grabs!! How freakin cool!!! Kind of makes me wish I was there with you guys racing vs. "proxying" but what better driver to pick than Sarah!! You go girl!! Give them boys a run for their money! And to have the Stewart car is cool!! I hope Smoke does good with his own team and cars this year coming up - ought to be interesting.

What is Perko's Cafe? Been to IHOP several times, but tell us a bit more about Perko's.

Good luck to all the racers! Ought to be a fun race!! Wish I was there!

PD2:thumbsup:

Perko's is a local cafe here in central California. It's basically the neighborhood coffee shop. Denny's opened a restaurant across the street from one thinking they would shut them down, they didn't. Denny's closed and Perko's is still there. Among the CHP and local PoPo it's preferred. They have something called "The Mother of all Banana Splits" for $6.95, feeds four or more.

Jim Hicks Jr. for the win with the #02 Lagano modified



:wave:

thanks for including me!

I'll drive my own car, thank you very much. :) Came home early.

Perko's is a local cafe here in central California. It's basically the neighborhood coffee shop. Denny's opened a restaurant across the street from one thinking they would shut them down, they didn't. Denny's closed and Perko's is still there. Among the CHP and local PoPo it's preferred. They have something called "The Mother of all Banana Splits" for $6.95, feeds four or more.

MMMMMMMM...Bananna Splits! Sounds like a awesome place! We got a place that sounds like that called Buffalo Grill - best darn breakfast and coffee around and yes, they too have stayed open longer than the Denny's and other places that have tried to compete. People will stand outside the main entrance door to get in! I thought Perko's might be something similar to it!

Thanks for the info bro! And good luck to the racers on winning this prize! Sounds like something my stomach would love! HAHA!!!

PD2:thumbsup:

I'll drive my own car, thank you very much. :) Came home early.

HAHAHA!!!! Welcome home Yoshi!! Glad to hear you made it back in short order!! Hope all was well in Japan and with your training! Enjoy racing your own car!!

PD2:thumbsup:

Track prep continues with a number of large pot holes in the back stretch being filled in.

http://pages.google.com/edit/sequoiaspeedway/DSC00133.JPG/DSC00133-large.JPG

This will add to the smoothness of the track surface and allow the cars to hook up better. Also several of the backstretch fence posts were bent in a recent animal migration and are being straightened with the trencher.

The improvements should be completed by the end of the week.

Oh no! Now you are going to start the controversy with all the racers....that the track did not hook up the same because weeks before the race someone messed with it. Then they are going to go off and blame Goodyear tires for providing the bad tires too. Reworking a track before a race is always a sure sign of the beginning of the name and blame game. HAHAHA!!!

I just hope they are able to smooth it out and produce the right traction for Sarah Racer! :p

PD2:thumbsup:

Pot holes are filled, fence posts are straight, and the popcorn machine has been fixed. Interesting in that pic, that's the middle of the back straight, and you can see the 5 degree banking pretty well. When the cars have dirty tires and come out of the corners sliding they'll fish tail down the straights for about half the length. I've spun in the opposite direction getting on too early, breaking the tires loose and sliding to the inside of the track because of the bank.

12 days to the big race and counting! Everyone practicing and getting warmed up? Cars all preped? How's the Slot Car Princess? She ready to put the laps on the Big Dawgs?! :p

PD2:thumbsup:

She's been somewhat sick, as to be expected. We were running laps this evening and the effects of watching the cars going around the track was giving her vertigo to some extent. She's OK on the track with just herself or one other car, but put 3 or 4 and she starts getting woozy. Part of this is because of her inner ear deformity as well. I can't get anywhere close to 1.97 seconds with my car or hers, but when I drive Pete's I can get down to 1.99 on clean tires. I'm running 2.04 and her car struggles to make 2.06. I think he just got the pick of the cars that were sent him and stuck us with the rest.

Nope. And I'm not telling. And stop playing with my toys while I'm gone.

HAHAHAHA!!! Now that's funny right there, I don't care who you are! Darn it! Yoshi, what did you do to my driver? She has to be in tip-top shape before the race - none of this vertigo and dizziness stuff. HA! Just kiddin with you! I hope she feels better soon - I'm sure I'll never experience what she has, but I've been there before where the only thing you can do is laydown and keep your eyes shut....and make sure a trash can is near by. HA!

Yoshi, when Pete is out, go through his car and see if you can figure it out - has to be something he did on his setup. hahahahaha

PD2:thumbsup:

Darn it! Yoshi, what did you do to my driver? She has to be in tip-top shape before the race - none of this vertigo and dizziness stuff.

It's actually called morning sickness, which is an oxymoron since she's sick sometimes all day long.

I think I have it figured out, Pete's in the hospital for a couple of days having hardware removed but I took a look at his car. It took me almost an hour, then I had to read the rules to make sure it was Kosher. I'm not sayin' what I was running but the old man is gonna get spanked. Sneeky, very sneeky.

Now I'm thinking of changing my car body to a Joey Lagano Toyota, just to be brand correct.

It's actually called morning sickness, which is an oxymoron since she's sick sometimes all day long.

I think I have it figured out, Pete's in the hospital for a couple of days having hardware removed but I took a look at his car. It took me almost an hour, then I had to read the rules to make sure it was Kosher. I'm not sayin' what I was running but the old man is gonna get spanked. Sneeky, very sneeky.

Now I'm thinking of changing my car body to a Joey Lagano Toyota, just to be brand correct.

Oh man! He's gonna have to one-up you when he gets out - just wait. HAHAHA!!! Glad you were able to figure out what he did to the car - just make sure you help out the Slot Car Princess too - and not in a bad way! HA!

I think switching to Toyota would definitely be appropriate!

PD2:thumbsup:

No secret really.

.450 outside rear tire, .420 inside rear tire, gearing change (not disclosing the ratio), stiffer outside pickup shoe spring, rotated motor magnets to find the best RPM, aftermarket guidepin.

It's 10% mechanical, 90% psychological. Guess which I have the advantage with. :)

No secret really.

.450 outside rear tire, .420 inside rear tire, gearing change (not disclosing the ratio), stiffer outside pickup shoe spring, rotated motor magnets to find the best RPM, aftermarket guidepin.

It's 10% mechanical, 90% psychological. Guess which I have the advantage with. :)

Psych'ing them out with your Jedi, voodoo mind tricks, eh? <With a wave of the hand> you will loose this race Yoshi....you will get me a Toyota Supra. HAHAHAHA!!

PD2:thumbsup:

:::These are not the droid's you are looking for::::

I won't get too far into some of things I used to to that actually work, but I used to really play mind games back about 15-20 years ago. I used to tape only the outside tire, telling my competition that the dirty inside tire slides on the track easier and acts as a sort of differential. When they weren't looking I'd tape the inside tire too. I would hammer my guide pins flat, into a sort of blade. The thing is that it still wasn't wide enough to keep the cars from spinning but the next week they were outlawed. I flipped the traction magnets in my modified car one year, took them 2 races to find that out in a tech inspection. When they thought I turned them back around I ran even faster. They never figured out why, but I had never raced the car with the flipped magnets, the faster car actually had a pair of the old Stront zapped motor magnets that looked identical to regular motor magnets. I ran a 4WD car one year in modified class, actually won a race. I also ran a 6-wheeled F-1 type car, and ran the actual G-plus car once they outlawed my creation. I've hand built bodies that had cobalt magnet fragments in them that got past tech. When you have this kind of a history of successful cheating everyone, especially the paranoid Martin Simone, thinks you're actually cheating when you win and you're not. There was someone cheating, and they did get caught, but it wasn't me.

Now that's just plain funny right there! Acting like you are cheating, even though you are not, only for them to make you change things so that its in your favor and not back to original. That has got to be funny to watch and be a part of.

I guess it comes down to the chicken and the egg thing - which came first, slot car racing cheating or 1:1 car racing cheating? Almost sounds too familiar! HAHAHAHA!!!

Good stuff Petey!
PD2:thumbsup:

Today's the day! Are the racers ready? Is the track prep'ed? Are the pits open? Time to light the fires and kick the tires?

Good luck to all the racers! And a VERY Merry, Blessed and Safe Christmas!!

PD2:thumbsup:

Track was prep'd, racers were ready, pits were open but muddy from recent rains.

Practice consisted of 2 twenty-five lap sessions per driver. The first session everyone pretty much did their set ups and ran some close to the track record laps. In the second session is where things got a little heated. The old track record was a 1.98 set by Pete, John King laid down a 1.99, then followed up with a 1.97 in his session. I ran a 1.97 then on my last lap blistered the track with a 1.95. John Mears ran a 1.96 five laps in a row then followed with a 1.95. All this time the old man was just watching us. When it came to Pete getting on the track he was running 2.0's, maybe a 1.99 for the first 10 laps, then he ran a 1.96 and pulled off with 5 laps of his 25 left. When we said to start qualifying I knew we were in trouble.

Pete drew the black ball and elected to qualify last, somehow I think it was fixed but since I was the one shaking the bottle it couldn't have been. John King qualified with a 1.96, John Mears a 1.97, Jim Hicks qualified with a 1.99, Sarah ran a 2.01, Jeff Fitzer ran a 2.00 flat, and Mr. Champion ran a 1.98. I ran a very nice 1.95. I reset the computer and Pete warmed up his car as we held our breath. The horn sounded and he took off, I don't think he backed out at all in turns 1 and 2, then his car sailed over the fence and bounced off the trees before landing on the floor. No emotion. No reaction, John put his car back on the track and he did the same exact thing again. Mr. Champion busted up laughing and walked away shaking his head, John Mears just stared at Pete looking for a reaction. After resetting his car he then ran 9 laps without so much as a wiggle; 2.1, 2.0, 1.97, 1.97, 1.93, 1.94, 1.91, 1.91 and a 1.89. Nobody said a word. He pulled his car off and placed it upside down in the infield and went to the kitchen. I swear to God, it was as if that car was the Holy Grail. We looked, all of us, and we couldn't figure it out.

In the heats Mr. Champion, Pete and I all went perfect on the night winning all 3 heats. We'd be 3 of the 4 in the A main. After the semi-mains were run John King joined us. Since Pete was TQ he took lane 3, which had been the fastest all night. By the way, Pete never got close to his qualifying times in the heats and two of us ran faster than he did on lap times. I took lane 2 simply because I didn't want to be outside of him on the starts. King took lane 1 and Mr. Champion took the outside.

For the first 100 laps we were all within 5 laps of each other. I was leading most of the time but Pete was never more than 2 or 3 laps down. We were all running mostly in the low 2's, a few quick laps in the mid 1.90's but everyone had established a rhythm. At about lap 175 things started picking up, King was in first, I was 2 laps behind, and Pete and I were on the same lap. By this time Mr.Champion was out of competition, more than 20 laps back. At lap 200 I heard the fast time alarm sound and saw Pete had run a 1.92, then again a lap later a 1.90. We stopped at the same time to tape our tires at 226 and I saw that I was leading with Pete a lap behind me, but his fast time had dropped to 1.89. Off we went, and I don't remember him passing me but when I stopped to tape at 240 he was ahead of me by a lap. That lap grew to 3 laps before I got back on the track and with the 3 to go I had caught him and passed him. I thought for sure he was going to tape but he didn't, and I passed him to make up my last lap down just as he took the white flag. There was nothing I could do, he won by about 3/4th of a lap. I had run the fastest laps of the race with a 1.88 and a 1.87 but I just couldn't make it up in the end. 250 laps on a short track like this is very tough, the entire race took just over 10 minutes but it seemed a lot longer.

Pete donated the R/C car to a local shelter this morning, the Christmas Tree is out on the balcony with fake presents under it. All of the slot cars are put away and the track is covered up with a bed sheet. Right now he's crashed out taking a nap, we were up late last night talking about moving to LA, and how Toyota recently announced a loss of market share in car sales. The economy is tough all over, and I spent part of today really wondering if I made the right decision to move my family to LA. But as I sat on the couch I started looking at all of the pictures of Sarah and her sister Maya and Pete from all over the world when they were growing up, and pictures of her mom and how she looked amazingly like Lucy Lu. I look at Sarah's daughter and see a young lady beginning to blossom, and can't wait for our own child this May. And I'm thinking, would I really want to take her away from all this? After Christmas I will be making the decision about Toyota, but it's looking more and more like I'm going to want to stay here.

Wow!! What a race!! Man, now that sounds like one for the record books for sure! Totally awesome race recap Yoshi - VERY good job!! Congrats to Mr. Champion! I still think that someone needed to spot Sarah some laps for you making her "handicapped" but then again I'm biased! HAHAHAHA!!! Just kidding! I'm sure she did an awesome job! Congrats to all the racers!

As for the Toyota thing and moving your family, that is a big choice and decision. Back in 2000 I was working for UUNET (before WorldCom bought us) and had an opportunity to join a team of 4 in Ashburn, VA. to work on something I had wanted to be a part of for a while. One of my co-workers from Dallas had already accepted and began his move and I was still working through the transition paperwork as well as convincing my wife that this was a good move. She had not been to Ashburn, but I had gone several times for business and to begin looking for housing and things like that - we even figured out the area that we wanted to move to. Right in the midst of that my wife and I decided to take a little more time and stepped back to pray about it again and just give us some time to weigh and decide if this was for sure the step we were going to take. Within about a week or two of us doing this was when WorldCom bought UUNET and all of a sudden EVERYTHING changed! The company as well as this job that was available totally changed. My co-worked who moved got locked into Ashburn and while he still works there today, is not doing what we were going to do nor what he wanted to do.

The point of my story is that in the midst of scrambling to make decisions and move and hit the mark on changing, sometimes its best to just step back, get your hands off of stuff and wait for one thing - peace. Following after peace in a situation will always lead you in the right direction and keep you from making unecessary moves or moves you may regret. That is my biggest suggestion for you and Sarah right now - step back, take your hands off of trying to figure this out, give it some time (if you have time) and don't make any decisions one way or the other, but just wait for peace in this decision and then when you both have it go after that peace and don't turn back.

I wish you guys a very Merry and Blessed Christmas!

PD2:thumbsup:

Happy Christmas Eve everyone, get that out of the way right now. :)

After talking to the guys who participated in this event who came up from Bakersfield and Long Beach it has been decided not to repeat it. We had planned to have a large scale class of the 440X2 cars with dirt bodies but the interest sort of wained after how tedious 250 laps with them got to be. Having to stop and tape every 20 to 30 laps was more of a problem than anticipated, drivers trying to either pick their cars up or return them to the track caused several incidents. In their words in "just wasn't fun".

I will continue to develop the dirt late model body but in February when we start racing again it will be back to the Lifelike cars, and more than likely the CoT. This was the series I had started when I was I had my accident in October, and it was an enormous amount of fun. I'm also going to be heading back to work on February 2nd, I will be on light duty until the summer to see if I can even continue to work. I intend to get the kids racing again and will be building a track somewhat lighter than Sequoia to transport to and from races.

If anyone out there would be interested in donating new or used Lifelike CoT cars please let me know. I have 6 left over from the fall and would like to field at least twice that. I have the 17/99, the 9/19 and the 24/48 so I need the 5, 18, 20, 11 and one or both 88's. Duplicates are fine, I will repaint them and re-decal them. Let me know via PM so I can plan for the future event.