I arrived at 9:00 am for the second day of the Jeg’s Cajun SportsNationals at NPRP. Beautiful Louisiana weather in the low 60’s with a D. A. of 460 (low temp. and low humidity with high pressure). The track was in excellent shape and there were over 450 cars present. They were parked all over the place, almost all the way over to LA-1 (close to a mile past the finish line), and I almost walked all the way back there.

Van and his family, Stella, Preston, Chandra, Byron and Eric were all there, along with Nick and his wife. They had leased an RV for the trip.

Van won the first round of the, race within a race, called the Cajun Challenge, or something like that, which was a way of having a time trial but the winner of the race getting to move on with a chance of winning $1000. Van ran a 10.88 on the 10.90 dial-in.

Van would not have such good luck for the second round. His starter locked up in the staging lane and they had to tow the car back to the pit area. When I left, around 3:00 pm, Van was in the process of changing the flywheel and starter. The old flywheel had some teeth missing. They will be ready for first round early Sunday morning. Photos for Sat. 3/21/09.