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| Features |
| The Learning Struggles of Jesse Lemel |
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- by Jesse Lemel
 | | Jesse Lemel in Pro IC Class |
Off to Jacksonville - the start of this year’s ProMoto Tour, and my debut in Pro IC. The hustle getting things ready to leave school for this race was pretty intense; as I had to write a paper, put together a project and get a whole bunch of work done before heading out on Wednesday for the race. But I got all of it done in the nick of time. I concluded my Math presentation Wednesday and headed back to my place grabbing my bags and went straight to the airport. The plane ride was not all that much fun because I was dealing with a cold I came down with the night before and during take off and landing I got a pretty good headache. This cold would prove to be an adversary of the weekend, as it went after my voice on Friday and I remained virtually voiceless for the remainder of the weekend. Not until Wednesday did my voice truly start to return.
Dealing with my cold was only one issue that would make this weekend more difficult. Another issue was my gauge not working, and at a track like JAX, you really rely on your data to get the gearing and jetting right. Because we did not have an engine temperature, we could not work on getting the jetting exact. I was not able to make sure that the VM engine was not over heating. Only having Friday to practice, we did not want to blow a motor and miss anymore potential laps than necessary. We were very disappointed that my gauge was not working again because we have been patiently working with the company that makes them hoping that they would be properly fixed. After all, we’ve sent it to them after each of the last three races I have attended. My gauge has not worked at any! Hopefully we will be able to come to a solution before the next event.
So we were going at it in an old fashion style with my Haase kart. That changes we made felt better in the corners, and it looked faster, but nonetheless, we continued working hard to make the kart faster, or what appeared to be faster. The true test came on Saturday morning when we went out to qualify.
We approached the day hoping for a top ten considering the circumstances, and in qualifying I found that I had my work cut out. Managing only 24th place meant that I would have to really work the draft and race smart. In the heat race, I moved up into 16th position, which I was pleased with. In the main event, I was hoping to move up some more positions and I managed to pick up two more spots, finishing the race in 14th. Also, we finally got data from my gauge! This showed some major things that we could change and we noticed that I managed to run almost all my laps within two tenths of each other, except the laps I was in traffic.
By Sunday, we were excited and ready to move up. Things were looking good at the beginning of qualifying while the rain was coming down, and I was in the top ten. Then the track started to dry and I started getting scuffled back. We were working hard on getting faster but my gauge wasn’t working again, so if we made a change in the wrong direction, sometimes we did not know until it was too late. I ended up getting pushed back all the way to 24th. This was mainly due to one corner, my kart was great through the whole track except for this one corner. I was either under or over revved and either way, I was dog slow, one the motor wouldn’t pick up and with the other I was out of control on the slick track.
Then came the heat race, at the start I got hosed, the person in front of me had a mechanical failure at the start and didn’t move an inch. I had to wait until the rest of the field passed me by and then I took off in about 30th. I ended the race in 20th position so all in all, I passed 10 guys. In the main I got a good start and picked up about five positions. I kept on pushing it hoping that I would continue to move up and for the first time all weekend it was possible. Within the next fifteen laps I moved up into 10th. However, after about the seventh lap I started to have a failure with my shift lever; when I would change gears the lever would stick instead of returning like it is supposed to. I had to manually push the lever back into place after every shift, being very careful not to accidentally shift back to the gear I just came from when returning the lever. This proved to become increasingly difficult as the lever became almost impossible to move. Eventually, I was forced to pull in when I could no longer shift the kart.
We have examined what happened and come up with a solution. My kart was very easy to drive and when we figured out the proper adjustments to make, we picked up the pace quickly. Also this was yet another pain free weekend with my Deep Seat on a rib killer of a track. I continue to be impressed with the high quality of the Shift products. Also we are looking forward to putting my VM powered Haase on the podium at upcoming events.
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