Weekly Updates:

2008 season in review………

The 2008 season was a year of ups and downs. We knew going into the year it would be a challenge for us as a team. We had the opportunity to trade our Dare Stock up to a Limited Late Model. Lauren didn’t have a lot of seat time in the Dare Stock class, so moving up to the Limited’s seemed a little too soon. The Limited’s are pretty similar to the Dare Stock other than the motors have more horsepower and have a little more adjustability built into them. The one big obstacle for Lauren would be the Limited was a stick shift verses the Dare Stock being a automatic transmission. Lauren had never driven a car with a clutch and standard transmission. That would be our first big challenge of the year. We practiced in the pits, and then on the track with no causalities. Lauren picked up on how to use the clutch pretty quickly.

The next obstacle for us was getting some track time in this car to learn what adjustments would work to get our lap times down. We had picked up 1 ½ secs. by the end of Friday practice before the season opener. We were all still in the learn mode as Lauren was figuring out the characteristics of the car, we were trying to figure out what wedge percentage, how much sway bar, how much tire press., brake bias, etc.

It was our goal in 2008 to get the car better for Lauren each week, and get our lap times down into the 23 sec. range (that’s what most of the competition was running) and get a top ten finish.

We did accomplish 2 out of the 3. The car never did seem to come around as we had hoped for her. We had mechanical issues from the beginning of the season. It started with clutch problems, then it was onto the blown motor, and the last straw was the rear end blowing up.

All in all we learned a lot. We are disappointed that we could never get the car right for Lauren. We are extremely proud of all her accomplishments this year. She did very well for what she had to drive. It was a far cry from a competitive car, but she made it competitive by adjusting her driving style. It’s been proven that a good driver can pick up a couple of tenths of second that the car may not have. Lauren is that driver and that’s why we are proud to have her behind the wheel of our car.  

It was after we had turned the car over to Mike Chaves, which we would discover where the handling issues were all derived from, a simple setting on the front end. It was Mike’s chassis man (Tim Smith) that realized this and was amazed that Lauren was able to drive the car as well as she did. It was after that change that the car would pick up a ½ sec. per lap and that would put the car right in the heart of the action. It was a few adjustments in the last couple of weeks of the season that the #00 would be fighting for the lead at the Fall Finally.

It was a pleasure to work with Lauren and Mike. We are very proud of them both. We were able to keep Mike in the points chase, as his car was wrecked. 

It allowed him to finish 9^th in points and also receive the Most Improved Driver Award for the year.

We look forward to the 2009 season in SK Lights as we will again be learning as a team.