Galletta's Karting Club

Galletta’s Karting Club – 2010 Season, Event #3 – Father’s Day, Sunday, June 20th, 2010:
 

Many of the snapshots are from our DVDs, which contain all footage from both camera angles of each race plus occasional extras. $5 each DVD, contact me. This weeks’ menu:

Fourteen drivers battled it out between only twelve available karts in the June 20th, 2010 Father’s Day 45 at Galletta’s. For three weeks in a row, a rainy Saturday made for a wet track on Sunday, but for the first time this year, it wasn’t so bad that we couldn’t race. Still made for a wet low groove in Turn 2 and going up the 1st half of the back stretch, but it was still a very good race.

First we had a Rookie/Novice 20-Lap Qualifier race included 2 returning novices (Chad Leroy and Jeff Tetro) and two 1st-timers at Galletta’s (Dave Latulip and Justin Lamb). Dave is a racer at Oswego’s dirt track, where he has won a handful of the Clone features and hopes to move up to the SBS Division at the big track. All raced well and we hope they had fun. The qualifier finished as follows:

6/20/2010 Rookie/Novice 20-Lap Heat:
1st. Dave Latulip (Galletta’s #5)
2nd. Chad Leroy (Galletta’s #2)
3rd. Jeff Tetro (Galletta’s #1)
4th. Justin Lamb (Galletta’s #6)

Like last week, if a driver misses a race due to work or family, they are allowed a make-up race. They will be credited on the end of the race that they missed. This week, we only had 1 make-up-race driver, who took the track with the rookie-novices and earned his bonus make-up points to keep him alive in the point standings.

6/20/2010’s 5-Lap B-Main [for Make-up Bonus Points for 6/14/2010]:
13th. Dick Dann (Dann Destroyer #86)

Again, many people think it is odd that Galletta’s Race Club is just one unique class of 1-WD Gas Flathead Karts with no weight or age divisions. We have one class with weight-to-power handicap, meaning a handicap system for heavier drivers. The biggest guys are allowed a little more horsepower (header, cam and gear) to make up for their handicap.  For one, it allows us a bigger class, and we all believe that it is WAY more fun to test your skills with more people and people of different ages and weights out there instead of a handful of drivers per class.

The first heat had a WILD  RIDE that scared everybody who saw it. On the 1st lap, local speedway flag-man and part-time Galletta’s Club driver Michael Howell (AKA “MC”) tried a pass attempt and caught wheels with Chad Leroy. MC then flipped into the infield, and ripped his pants exposing his underwear for the remainder of the evening. He seemed ok upon repeated questioning and continued the race.

Regular 10-Lap Heat 1:
1st. Chris Stevens (Galletta’s #4)
2nd. Jared Halstead (Galletta’s #9)
3rd. Arnold “A.J.” Nason (Galletta’s #6)
4th. Michael “MC” Howell (Galletta’s #0)
5th. Chad Leroy (Galletta’s #2)
6th. Dick Dann (Dann Destroyer #86)
7th.  Justin Lamb (Galletta’s #5)

Heat 2 saw Matt and Melissa come together on lap 1. But Matt recovered and was able to steal another win by nipping George Russell at the finish line by literally a bumper or less.

Regular 10-Lap Heat 2:
1st. Matt Stevens (Galletta’s #3)
2nd. George Russell (Galletta’s #2)
3rd. Dave Latulip (Galletta’s #5)
4th. Jeff Tetro (Galletta’s #1)
5th. Tim Galletta (Galletta’s #7)
6th. Shadoe Russell (Doe #26)
7th. Melissa Stevens (Stevens #19, #80)

We had more drivers than karts this evening, and we had to have an elimination race that unfortunately had to eliminate two drivers from the feature because we were 2 karts short. Since Michael “MC” Howell elected to flag instead of race, the race for the final seat was just between 2 drivers for 1 kart.

8-Lap Consi:
1st. Chad Leroy (Galletta’s #5)
2nd. Justin Lamb  (Galletta’s #1)

Jared Halstead started on the pole and set a fast pace for the event, closely followed by George Russell. Melissa Stevens had a wild solo wreck in turn 4, and the newbies had several cautions early on – slowing up the show a bit, and the suddenly retired and disappeared, but other than that, it was a bumper-to-bumper train race from 1st through 9th – just plain old CLOSE racing, again proving our new handicap power-to-weight system (on top of our handicap start system) to be spot on.

 The bumper-to-bumper CLEAN racing went on all night, specially at the end of the race, with only Matt making a few skillful passes to work past his brother and George Russell on the same spot. When George momentarily slowed, Matt trapped Chris behind him and passed them both to move into 2nd.

The feature was led all 45 laps by Jared Halstead from his handicapped pole position, holding off pass attempts from George Russell and Matt Stevens (seen nearly getting the pass here), which was nearly the same result as last week’s race with Jared’s brother-in-law, Tim Galletta. Speaking of points-leader Tim, he was flying, but a late-race slip off the track with a lap to go dropped him from 5th to 9th. With only 1 lap to go, and the karts so closely matched, just not enough time to get any positions back.

6/22/2010 45-Lap Feature Order-of-Finish::
1st. Jared Halstead (Galletta’s #9)
2nd. Matt Stevens (Galletta’s #3)
3rd. George Russell (Galletta’s #2)
4th. Chris Stevens (Galletta’s #4)
5th. Dick Dann (Dann Destroyer #86)
6th. Jeff Tetro (Galletta’s #0)
7th. Melissa Stevens (Stevens #80, #19)
8th. A.J. Nason (Galletta’s #6)
9th. Tim Galletta (Galletta’s #7)
10th. Shadoe Russell (Doe #26) [DNF]
11th. Chad Leroy (Galletta’s #1) [DNF]
12th. Dave Latulip (Galletta’s #5) [DNF]
13th. Justin Lamb (–) [DNS]
14th. Michael “mc” Howell (–) [DNS]

[DNF] = Did Not Finish all 45-laps
[DNS] = Not Enough Open Karts To Start

Make-up-Race Credit:
15th. Russ Bartlett (Hammerd #35) [credit from 7/11/2010]
16th. Russ Hockey (Hockey #00) [credit from 8/29/2010]
17th. Larry Phillips (L&K Small Engine #04) [credit from 9/24/2010]
18th. Jeff Johnson (Galletta’s #7) [credit from 9/24/2010]
19th. Randy Platt (Chrusher.com #74) [credit from 9/24/2010]