TAJ Racing $500 Beater Racing at it's best!

2009 LeMons South (Fall) 

     After overcoming a testing accident with the D.T. Read Steel Ford Escort GT two weeks before the race, the TAJ Racing team spent many late nights getting the car ready for Carolina Motorsports Park.  The work on the car was completed and it was loaded on the trailer 6 hours before the team left for Kershaw, SC. 

     The car ran well on Day 1.  We had a few issues with other cars coming in contact with us which caused us to fall behind while we spent our time in the penality box.  For the rest of the day we were playing catch up but the quality of the field made catching up pretty difficult. 

     Day 2 kept us a little busy as well.  Travis drove a double stint on Sunday morning in hoping to make some ground on the leaders but a few mechanical gremlins snuck up on us.  We lost all the water in the cooling system in the morning and then discovered an oil leak shortly thereafter.  The team was able to refill the cooling system without loosing much time in the pits but the oil leak needed our attention at every pit stop.  We were having to add 1qt of oil every hour to keep the car running. 

     In the end we finished a repectable 28th position overall out of 110. 

     Our next race is in MARCH 2010 at the 24 Hours of Rockingham at the Rockingham Motor Speedway in North Carolina!!

2009 LeMons South (Spring)

Our race started very promising but quickly went downhill when we were spun out by one of the slowest cars on the track.  Unfortunately our car was stalled on track and unable to re-fire due to the fuel cutoff switch being activated in the impact so it had to be towed back in.  We lost about 20 minutes of track time in the whole ordeal which knocked us to the back of the pack.  Once we got the car going again it ran flawlessly as we were making up time the rest of the first day.  It was pretty neat seeing our car somewhere in the 60^th position, then working our way up through the pack up to 15^th at the end of the first day. 

The second day was a little tougher to make up time.  The competition in the top 20 is getting better and better so it was getting harder to make up positions.  By halfway through the second day we were in 12^th until we had an issue with the brakes which we able to make repairs during a yellow flag and loosing only one position in the process. 

All in all it was a little disappointing to finish where we did because I feel we really had a top 5 car.  We’ll get them next time though!!