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Kaley Gharst – Upside Down! (Bill W) KNOXVILLE, IA (May 23) – “Upside Down”…every sprint car driver will experience it sooner or later, but none want to. It’s a part of the game in this sport, and after last Saturday night, Kaley Gharst knows the feeling well. After entering the night with high expectations and some new setup ideas, Mother Nature threw her trump card on Knoxville Raceway track conditions, and the #7K team was left scrambling for an answer. Drawing a late pill for time trials is always tough, but on Saturday night, it became an uphill climb that no one traversed well. “Going out late in qualifying kinda hurt us,” says the understated Decatur, Illinois driver. “We still should have been better than what we were. We haven’t had our new setup on a slick track yet, and we’re still chasing ourselves with it a bit.” With the heats transferring the top five to the feature, Kaley started outside row four and had some ground to make up. Within a lap, he was into a transfer and looking good. Then things went bad in a hurry. “We got a good start in the heat race,” he says. “We got into a transfer. I drove it into turn three like I normally would, but the car never did stick, it went through what small cushion there was and into the wall. That was about all there was to that.” Flips are infrequent for the aggressive youngster. Despite racing 50+ times in 2007, he only got upside down three times (once at Florida at the beginning of the season, twice at Little Rock at the end). The consistency lent to twelve wins during the season. The damage was extensive, but repairable on Saturday. “The motor and the frame were alright, but pretty much everything else wasn’t,” he says. “It wasn’t a hard hit, but it hit wrong and tore some stuff up.” The #7K team did a great job to get the car ready for the B main. “We were still putting the wing on when the B was staging,” says Kaley. “We were really cutting it close there. We thrashed so hard, I was halfway waiting for something not tightened to fall off. Everything held together, and the guys did a real good job of getting it out there. Unfortunately, the track was rubber-down by then, and we couldn’t do much moving up.” Kaley would finish 9th after starting in row six. The night wasn’t a fair assessment of some of the setup changes the team is looking at. “We never did get enough laps in with the setup,” he says. “We had the car extremely tight, and it was a little hard to turn. These new shocks give a lot of side-bite, but we’ll keep working on it and getting something figured out with it.” Kaley will return to the Lee County Speedway on Friday night to compete with the Winged Outlaw Warriors. He’ll be driving for the Dale Oaks/Randy Plath combination. He won three times at the speedway last season on his way to a Sprint Invaders championship and Driver of the Year honors. Obviously, he’ll return to Knoxville on Saturday, with all other plans for the weekend tentative right now. Keep an eye on Kaley’s progress this week and beyond at www.KaleyGharst.com ! Kaley would like to thank the following sponsors: Maxim Racing, Phillips’ Floors, Bell Racing, info2go, Parker Signs and Graphics, LWBJ Accounting, Community State Bank, Pro Shocks, QA1, VRP Shocks, Charlie Fisher Racing Engines, Karl Chevrolet, WillCo Services and HostIowa.net - Your Complete Internet Solution. If you would like to receive Kaley’s weekly releases, send an e-mail with the subject line “Kaley” to sprntcar@iowatelecom.net . |