My son races quarter midgets here in Northern California, and this weekend was the Battle of the Buckle at Tri-Valley Quarter Midget Association in Livermore - a two-day event that went about as well as we could have hoped.
Day 1 was two heats, with the second heat gridded in inverted order from the first. He won heat 1 and drove back to P2 in the inverted heat 2.
Then came the fun part: the main event grid is set by spinning the "wheel of misfortune." Full field inversion was on the wheel, but he got away with only the top two positions flipping. So he started P2, on the outside line, which is a tough place to start in quarter midgets.
The 9-car field took a while to get going with a few failed double-file starts (think NASCAR style) before they finally went green in single file. He battled into the lead and held it to the end to win.
What made it extra satisfying: we'd put a lot of time into the setup leading up to this one, and it finally all came together after a few frustrating races.
I trimmed the video to the 7 minutes that matter for the race. Full onboard video with telemetry (it's a touch out of sync on this video because of a bug that I've now fixed) is here if anyone wants to take a look to help inform any advice they'd have:
https://www.racingpace.com/s/a4608fde-385e-4b9c-a9ce-65b80dca1148
If anyone has observations to share on his racing he'd (we'd) love to hear it. Thanks!
https://reddit.com/link/1v36eqd/video/4ddpi08zrpeh1/player