Stars of Karting Race
Ocala Gran Prix Cody's home track was the first race of the Stars of Karting 2008 East Series races so we decided to take part at the last minute. Thanks to Gray Racing for Richards support in Cody's efforts in the Stars race.

This would not only be Cody's first Stars race but his fiorst time driving a kart powered by a JICA motor. We leased two motors from Marc at HiRev for this race; this was by far the most expensive race we had ever entered.

We took Cody's Arrow kart over Thursday before the race to finish registering, putting the motor on Cody's kart. Stars has a ton of Rules that no other series has it provide interesting getting everything straight.

Friday was an official practice day which we thought would place him in which group he would qualify with, not so it was a timed practice but really counted for nothing. Cody's times keep him in the top ten all day getting as high up as 5th place, not bad for his first outing in a JICA.

Stars of Karting has a very weird format as Friday official practice counts for nothing, Saturday qualifying determines how you will start the three heats. Two heats are held on Saturday with the third on Sunday along with two finals.

Cody surprised everyone there by qualifying P8, heck we had the smallest trail there, the smallest race budget, the only Arrow kart in the JICA class, pretty cool.

In heat #1 Cody's throttle cable came apart on the warm up lap, racings lady luck had shown brightly up to this point. In heat #2 Cody managed to finish 12th and in heat #3 he finished 18th. Not bad for his first Stars race, first time with a JICA on his kart.

Saturday it had rained off and on all day but we pretty much lucked out by being able to run on a pretty dry track, Sunday that all changed as it poured down rain all day. The track turned into a lake pretty much it was a very unpleasant day of racing. Cody has almost no experience racing in the rain and we where really lost with our rain set up. I'm very proud of the fact Cody never let the trying circumstances get him down, he never got down, never lost hope in driving a good race a getting a good finish.The whole experience was on the whole a great one and I wish we had run JICA in the Winter Tour now. Next is the WKA Florida State Championship race in Homestead next weekend.

Pictures below from the Stars of Kart race in Ocala 2008, click on small image to see a larger view.

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