Sun, wind, oil and exhaust.

Today was Tech, Test and Tune for the Mini Indy. The weather was just about perfect and it was a day full of go cart inspecting  and fixing. Here are the tech tents where a lot of the action  happens especially on tech day. We drain and refill the oil, check the compression, set the air pressure on the rear tires and inspect the cart for safety and other necessary stuff that is required equipment. We also make sure the carts are not modified in ways that will give them an advantage. There are other things going on also like fitting bodies on frames and fixing other things that happen to be broken if the teams bring us them.

 Here is Embraer's pits. They always have a very fast car.

 Tony Stewart's car was here again this year. They fire it up and drive it around and they also have a simulator you can drive to see how good you can drive a race car.

 Here are some more pits set up.

Skywest puts on a banquet that night where they have some good food. They also judge the carts for the best looking, best theme, best costumes and they finish the pit stop contest to see who is the fastest. Here are some of the carts. There are some amazing paint jobs displayed. Most teams have a race body and a show body. Here are some pictures of the carts on display. Here's Michelin's car.

This is Texas Air Composites cart. It's a carbon fiber wrap.

Here is one displayed as the yellow submarine based off the Beatles song. The paint was cool and made to look like it was riveted.

 Here is a close up of the paint.

This one was a Grease themed car. It was cool. I liked the graphics on this one.

 Close up of the graphics showing an engine with dual carbs.

 More carts with neat paint. I know there are some big dollar paint jobs on these fiberglass bodies.

This car is Future Aviation's and took many of the top prizes of the night. The paint was amazing and the costumes were great. Of course the theme was The Wizard of Oz.

This was all hand painted and looked amazing. There was many hours put into this one.

The City of St. George's car. It is an all women team.

 This was a high metallic paint but didn't show up very well on the picture.

This shows how many people attend the banquet. There is a silent auction that goes on also and all the proceeds go to the United Way. The whole event is all for charity which makes it even funner to participate in.

Here is the team that had the yellow submarine car. They took 2nd place in the costume contest. It's almost like Halloween all over again at the banquet.

 Here is the wizard of oz and they did take first place in the costume and the theme contests.

I didn't get any pictures of the pit stop contest because I was judging it but it was wild as usual. Standard Aero took first place in that contest. Tomorrow is race day and it's suppose to be really windy. They race up on top of the bluff where the old airport was located and it is always windy up there. It should make for an interesting day. Hopefully we can have lots of fun and everything will turn out safe. Check it out tomorrow to see if we get blown off the bluff by wind!