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Kaley Gharst – Dash Crash!
by: Bill Wright)
DECATUR, IL (Sept 25) – A promising start to what would have been a
tripleheader of 410 racing last weekend, ended abruptly for sprint car
driver Kaley Gharst on night two. After registering a second place finish at
the Morgan County Speedway in Jacksonville, Illinois on Friday, he took the
family “G” car to West Plains, Missouri and ended up crashing out of the
dash, and thwarting a Sunday trip to Quincy.
An open 410 show Friday at Jacksonville was the bright spot of the weekend
for the Decatur, Illinois 20 year old driver. Midwest All Star shows were
also planned at the West Plains Speedway and Quincy Raceways on Saturday and
Sunday.
Qualifications were the first order of business on the Jacksonville tight ¼
mile, and Kaley timed in second quick. “We went out late, and we had the
quick time of the night until Danny (Smith) went out dead last and beat us,”
he says.
He went on to describe running second in the heat to Smith, who swept the
weekend of racing in Illinois. “We let Danny get away from us on the outside
there,” he says. “The car felt pretty good.”
Kaley lined up outside row two for the feature event, and was hitting on all
cylinders. “We were running well in the feature,” he relates. “We got up to
Danny and actually got around him for a bit. We lost our brakes a little
later on, and that isn’t good at Jacksonville. We were able to hold on for
second though.”
The status of Saturday night’s race in West Plains was in doubt, but the
track staff did what it had to do to get it in.
“They had quite a bit of rain on Friday night, so the track was pretty
heavy,” says Kaley. “We didn’t have the car quite right, but with only ten
cars there, we were third quick in time trials. We got the car working
pretty decent there in the heat and ran second.”
As the Gharst family prepared for the feature event, officials approached
them about running the dash. “We actually weren’t supposed to run the dash,
those are for members only,” says Kaley. “I guess they didn’t have enough to
run it, so they asked us to. We had the car set up for the feature and not
the dash and it was way too tight.”
The condition resulted in a “dash crash”. “We went into turn one, and hooked
the right rear and that was the end of it,” says Kaley, who has suffered
through a tough year after winning 12 feature events in 2007. “We went end
over end into the fence. Luck bit us again there. I thought we might turn
our season around a bit, but we ended up crashing.”
The damage to the car will be assessed and the racing schedule evaluated, as
the racing season starts to wind down in the Midwest.
Keep an eye on Kaley's progress this week and beyond at
www.KaleyGharst.com !
If you would like to receive Kaley's weekly releases, send an e-mail with
the subject line "Kaley" to
sprntcar@iowatelecom.net .
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