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Austin McCarl – Half-mile Test!
(Bill W) June 17, 2008 – Austin McCarl passed his first half-mile test with flying colors. Facing 35 competitors and his first formal competition on a larger track, the fifteen year old Altoona, Iowa driver had his work cut out for him Wednesday night at the State Fair Speedway in Sedalia, Missouri. When the dust settled, he qualified for his first Winged Outlaw Warriors feature event and rolled the car back in the trailer in one piece.
Austin had some experience on a “typical” State Fair track. “The first time I ever sat in a sprint car was at the Iowa State Fairgrounds for practice,” he says. “Sedalia is a similar flat ½ mile track. The bigger tracks are different to drive, obviously it’s faster, but you’ve got to concentrate more on keeping it straight. If you drive the bottom, you’ve got to finesse it, and on top you have to come out of it full tilt.”
Austin drew a sixth starting spot for his heat race. Extra hot laps were needed to iron the track, and heavy conditions continued through the WOW heats. In the end, the youngster had stood on the gas for the fourth and final transfer spot to the feature. “We just had a good start,” he remembers. “Starting on the outside, we were able to ride around a couple guys there in the first turn. I followed the guy in front of me (Dustin Adams) around, and that was it. Jason Johnson started third and ran away with it.”
Austin lined up in row seven, and the track had dried considerably since his last laps on the track a couple of hours earlier. “The track slicked off a lot from the heat race,” he adds. “They had run the Outlaw heats, the B mains, the celebrity race and the Outlaw feature before we got out there, so we were pretty loose with our setup. Paired with me not driving very smart, we ended up 17th.”
Chalking Sedalia up to some good experience, crew chief Lenard McCarl and the team brought the Janet Holbrook #17 to Eagle Raceway on Friday. Just when it looked like he would make his first feature at the tricky 1/3 mile, fortune went away again. “We were running fourth there in the heat race and broke a camshaft going into turn one with two laps to go,” says Austin. “We don’t have much going on until we get a motor back, so we would take any sponsorship!”
It looks like Austin will have a break for at least this week. He was back playing basketball on Sunday with his high school team (Southeast Polk) in the summer league, but plans to be back racing soon!
When Austin makes a feature, we’ll do a release for him. Call it some motivation of sorts. If you’d like to be included via e-mail, shoot one to [email protected] with “Austin” in the subject line.
Austin would like to thank Janet Holbrook, Lenard, Big Game Treestands, DeBerg Concrete, AmericashAdvance.com, Jack L. Anderson Auto Body and Goodyear Tires for all their help!
Austin watches hot laps with pop
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