Jan 2007 Go Racing.indd - Go Racing Magazine

Age and experience prevailed over youth and enthusiasm
as FTK short filled their slowest driver, former Rotax Masters
National Champion, Andy Seesemann. FTK then pitted with
Team SP Racing on their final stop of the day, topping of
Jordan Musser’s tank and sending him out head to head with
the young gun Christian Franck. Few drivers can keep pace
with Musser in a Rotax and Franck did a heck of a job trying
to do so. Little by little Musser was able to gap the youngster
a tenth here, five tenths there. Franck gave it his all, and was
able to turn lap times as good as Musser’s, but not consistently.
One second became two, two was soon five and with only a
few minutes remaining the distance was an unreachable dozen.
As the time tacked away Musser refused to look at the flag
woman and see the time left on the clock, but the checkered
flag was thrown right on time at four hours. Officials might
want to rethink the checkered flag thing as the flag was given to
a back marker at four hours not the leader who had just passed
start finish 15 seconds before. Checkered flag should fly for the
winner in my book; it kind of takes away from glory if a kart
not even on the lead lap sees it first. Regardless, Musser was
too much to handle and the disappointment weighed heavily
behind Franck’s helmet visor. Musser took the ceremonial
victory lap with the checkered flag high in the air and drove
into the pits pointing at his fuel tank. The tank was empty and
surprisingly the Rotax still had maybe a half lap left in it. Insult
was added to injury, as Team SP was DQ’d for a petty fuel filter
mounting issue. I’ve got to just say boo, booo, boooo on that
one for this reason alone. Only a handful of teams of the 25
actually came here thinking they could win. Sure most hoped
and prayed, but they knew some serious luck would have to
be on their side for that to happen. So, if say 10 teams were
cocky enough to think they could win, the remaining 15 teams
were there for one reason, FUN. It’s a shame a great race ended
that way, but hopefully the organizers will learn and implement
something a little more fun into the next one. FTK was awarded
the first place prize, a Gearbox bag filled with $500 worth of
accessories, while the now second place Team Proven each got
$100 Rotax dollars. A late race charge by Vapor Racing earned
Page 44 Go Racing Magazine January 2007