For the third race of the fall season there were nine kids competing.

 

For the first heat Claire started on the pole.  Megan, Brendan and Taylor were all running well and Claire had to work to maintain her position.  She was able to maintain the lead for the win.  

 

When she was entering the pits her air filter fell off.  I later found that in the pictures I had taken that it had fallen off during the race and it must have been stuck in the frame rails of her kart (see the picture above).  When we went to put the air filter back on we noticed that the part of the carburetor that clamps to the intake manifold was cracked.  The carburetor was ready to fall off.  We quickly pulled the carburetor off of Amelia’s cart because she is not racing yet and installed it on Claire’s kart.  The kart seemed to be running well on the stand so we got it ready for the next heat.

 

The second heat started with Claire on the outside of the front row.  After two laps I could tell that something was wrong with her kart.  She was falling back and got passed by the rest of the pack.  By the fourth lap she was drastically slowing and I gave her the signal to go into the pits.

 

The kart would idle fine but when she tried to accelerate the motor would bog down and stall.  We put the kart on the work stand and pushed it back to the pits.  My friend Jim and I switched the needle and seat from her original carburetor and it made a slight improvement.  Jim then gave us a new spark plug and motor seemed to wake up and run like is used to.

 

For the start of the main Clare was in second place.  She normally has great starts but at the green flag 2 karts passed her before she got rolling and four turns later on the back straight the motor was bogging down so bad that she had to pull off.  Because she started the race they counted her as being in ninth place at the finish.  Needless to say she was very upset, I was too.  There was something plugging up the carburetor.