Galletta's Karting Club

6/10/2018 – Josh Arnold wins the 23rd Annual Galletta’s Karting Season Opener [+YouTube]

Sunday, June 10th, 2018 – Well, our 23rd Season Opener at Galletta’s Greenhouse Backyard Speedway occurred. And while the racing was close and competitive (as usual), it was only… five drivers, which quite possibly could be a 15 year low! Josh Arnold continues his impressive ways of the last three years (two time defending Visitor’s Points Champion) and won (driving his father-in-law’s #29; his #93 was still in need of repairs for breaking during last year’s Klassic 200). Josh again is looking like the top visiting driver and also looking at being the 1st driver in our history to knock Matt and Chris out of their 1-2/2-1 perch on top the point standings for all 22 prior seasons. But it’s kind of easy for the top three drivers in the past two seasons when nobody else has the balls to show.
More: Race Page with YouTube Videos & Points | Victory Photo

Unfortunately, our opener was not well attended. In fact, the lowest amount of drivers in around a decade and a half! We have several drivers (new and returning vets) that tell us they are coming, then race day we’re sitting waiting for their arrivals that never happen. Regardless, even though our feature was the size of a heat race, we decided to not let our fun be ruined by the no shows.

STARTING GRID

1. Mike Patak (Galletta’s Greenhouse #43)
2. Josh Arnold (Gleason #29)
3. Matt Stevens (Galletta’s Greenhouse #33)
4. Chris Stevens (Galletta’s Greenhouse/OswegoSushi.com/Chrusher.com #4)
5. Melissa Stevens [w/newborn Sarah Stevens] (Scissors n’ Fur #19)

Mike Patak started on the pole (in the Galletta’s Greenhouse #43), but defending visitor’s champ Josh Arnold blew by him (in his father-in-law’s #29) when the green flag dropped. Matt and Chris passed each other back and forth once each trying to pass Patak as well, but Matt finally got by him first, and then Chris several laps later.

After a restart for a spun #43, Josh, Matt and Chris stayed in single file for the remainder of the event. The top three of the past two seasons were again 1-2-3.

Live Broadcast

Also of note, this became the 1st ever race in our history where we attempted to broadcast live on YouTube. It worked! Here it was on demand replay, although just a stationary camera:

It would come out better if we had more camera people. As it was, it sat stationary, with only one camera person, Chris’ wife Rungnapha “Aoo” Stevens. And as for that, watch the regular, Unedited Race Video footage:

FINAL ORDER OF FINISH

1. Josh Arnold (Gleason #29)
2. Matt Stevens (Galletta’s Greenhouse #33)
3. Chris Stevens (Galletta’s Greenhouse/OswegoSushi.com/Chrusher.com #4)
4. DNF – Mike Patak (Galletta’s Greenhouse #43) [DNF – Mechanical failure]
5. DNF – Melissa Stevens [w/unborn Sarah Stevens] (Scissors n’ Fur #19) [DNF – 1 lap for points]
   – MAKEUP RACE – BONUS POINTS:
6. 6/24/2018 – 1st. Kelly Miller (Galletta’s #9)
7. 6/24/2018 – 2nd. Earl Miller (Galletta’s #5)
8. 6/24/2018 – 3rd Griffin Miller (Galletta’s #1)
9. 6/24/2018 – 4th. Andrew Kemble (Galletta’s #2)
10. 7/15/2018 – 1st. Kevin Galletta (Team Galletta’s Greenhouse #43)
11. 7/15/2018 – 2nd. Steve Sixberry (Team Galletta’s Greenhouse #9)
12. 7/15/2018 – 3rd. Nick Klaben (Team Galletta’s Greenhouse #2)
13. 7/15/2018 – 5th. Jeff Vincent (Team Galletta’s Greenhouse #1)
14. 7/29/2018 – 1st. Richard Allen (Team Galletta’s Greenhouse #12j)
15. 8/13/2018 – 3rd. Stephen James (Galletta’s Greenhouse Racing #2)

The Pregnant Dad Club?

On a quirky side note: Something funny we didn’t realize until this past weekend that Matt’s wife (fellow driver Melissa Stevens, doing her usual one lap for points), Josh’s fiance and Chris’ wife are all pregnant at the same time with their 2nds! Go figure! Busy off-track action this past offseason for the top three point scorers, I guess! (Although Chris’ wife may have been pregnant around the time of last year’s Klassic 200. Maybe she’s a Klassic win baby?)

New Scoring Exception

Yep. Photobucket? You suck now.

With so few competitors, we usually do not race. It’s been a policy of ours for years to only race if we have at the very least 6 drivers (even though back in the 1990s, it used to just be Chris, Matt and their dad with an occasional friend or family member). Why? It’s usually not worth the effort of prepping karts, the track, and doing points, pics and videos for our website unless we have enough people on the track to make it exciting.

However, we decided not to just shut ourselves down just because others didn’t show. Josh and Mike made it, why punish them if others couldn’t? We wasted many perfectly good weekends last year doing just that.

So, instead we will now accept races with fewer than 8 competitors, but top three bonus points will not count unless we have at least 7 kart drivers on the starting grid that will race more than one lap. Otherwise, we are handing out bonus points for just showing up and it kind of defeats the purpose of scoring bonus points. They were instituted to reward laps in the top three when we had bigger races of 10-15 drivers. We can have that again if people just showed. And think about it? Three drivers have homes and live on the same property as this backyard speedway resides upon, so that means we only need a few people show up. So… what’s up people? C’mon!

2018 Point Standings for 1-WD Gas Flathead Backyard Karting World Championship at Galletta’s Greenhouse Backyard Karting Speedway

After the 6/10/2018 through 6/10/2018 Races:

KEY: 
® = Rookie (Less than 1 season experience on track)
* = Makeup Feature Used
T = Mid-Race Repair Timeout (-5 pt. penalty)
k = Mid-Race Kart Change (-5 pt. penalty)

6/24/2018 – Rain-Postponed Makeup Race

Sunday, June 24th, 2018 – In a strange string of bad luck for our race scheduling (which we have had an unbelievably large share of for around a year now), rain drenched the track most of the day and deterred several committed drivers from coming (while on the flip side, many weeks we have had great weekends and nobody make it up to race). But when the rain let up, Matt Stevens went to work and got the track suitable enough to run. Kelly Miller brought some racers up and we had a makeup points race (Matt will be scored for non-seasonal bonus points). We went live (stationary camera) AND tape delay (regular angle).

6/24/2018 Makeup Race Final Order of Finish:

1. (6th) Kelly Miller  (Galletta’s Greenhouse #9) +53 points
2. (—) Matt Stevens (Galletta’s Greenhouse/Chrusher.cim/OswegoSushi.com #74) + Banked Post-Season Bonus Points
3. (7th) Earl Miller (Galletta’s Greenhouse #5) +50 points
4. (8th) Griffin Miller (Galletta’s Greenhouse #1) +47 points
5. (9th) Andrew Kemble (Galletta’s Greenhouse #2) +44 points

ADD-ON POINTS

2018 Point Standings for 1-WD Gas Flathead Backyard Karting World Championship at Galletta’s Greenhouse Backyard Karting Speedway

After the 6/10/2018 through 6/24/2018 Races:

[table id=20180624 /]