RACE REPORT: ICC Shifter Rookie Evan Walters Has Great Run At WKA Manufactures Cup Event
(St. Louis, MO) It was Walters Motorsports second event ever for running a shifter. The last time was with an 80cc shifter at a small track in St. Louis. Now the team took on the heavy challenge of driving an ICC with absolutely no testing at one of the biggest national races of the year. It was the WKA Manufactures Cup race in New Castle, IN against some of the toughest competitors in the country.
Evan was forced to travel to the track on Friday with no help, the rest of the crew had other things they needed to take care of in St. Louis. Vogel Racing hauled the kart to the track for us and let Evan pit under their tent. This meant 15 year old Evan was forced to learn an entirely new machine all on his own, as Vogel Racing had a lot of business to take care of running 4 karts that weekend within 2 drivers. By the end of the day Evan had worked a lot of the bugs out of his driving and would be just about ready to do some racing.
Shane drove up through the night to get to the track at about 1:30 in the morning on Saturday. Shane and Evan worked together to get the kart ready to race Saturday’s event. Evan’s first time qualifying an ICC shifter kart put him 11th of 18 karts. Pretty good for his first time in an ICC to any normal person, not for Evan. Evan made a few small changes on his kart to get ready for the heat race. This was his first time ever attempting a stand still start with an ICC. As a result he went from 11th to last in about 100 feet. He spent the entire race working his way through the field and was able to make it to the 12th position as he crossed the line. Now he’s really upset that he messed the start up that bad causing him to lose all those sports, so what does he do on the feature start? The exact same thing, starting 12th he would find himself in the back as they went into turn 1. He again worked his way through the field and came to the 12th position to finish off Saturday’s event. What would Sunday bring?
The answer: Some incredible driving from this ICC rookie. While all the other drives put on new tires for Sunday’s event, Evan elected to save the money and focus on what he came to do, learn the Intepid chassis and Champion Racing Motor. He did WAY more then that, on used tires he put the kart in the 6th starting spot of 19 karts. On the warm up lap for the pre-final wh worked a little bit on his starts. Finally, he pulled one off. In fact he was moving forward. With one lap to go in the pre-final he found himself in the 4th position. However, with just 3 turns to go he snapped a shifter chain. This has got to be a first for any shifter chain as they are about a 3/4 inch thick. Now he would be forced to start the Feature event dead last. He did not give up. On the start he picked up 4 spots right off the bat. From there on he drove like a madman, passing a kart at any chance he got. When he crossed the line he was in the 8th position right on the bumper of the 7th position. It was truly an amazing thing to see this ICC rookie come from dead last to the 8th position after all it was a totally new ball game and he had to learn most of it on his own.
In 2008 Walters Motorsports plans to run all the STARS of Karting East Events as well as the Opener and Closer events. We also plan to run a few WKA events. This will pretty much total our schedule for 2008. We plan to run the TaG’s at all of these events and then Evan will drive his new Intrepid ICC to the front of the field in select event, of which he will most likely double up with the ICC and the TaG. Stay turned to the WMS website for the 2008 racing schedule.
Walters Motorsports would like to thank all our business partners for their continued support to the team and racing in general. These include; Caribbean Creme, Champion Racing, Intrepid Kart Technology, Leading Edge Motorsport, WaltersWebDesign.com and WaltersImages.com.
For more information on Walters Motorsports please visit our website www.WaltersMotorsports.com
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