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This year for me has been an amazing year with lots of accomplishments plus all the learning that has gone on. To me my breakthrough towards becoming a front runner or to have that possibility week in and week out was at Stockton 99 Speedway. I qualified 5th and was running 3rd until my "rookieness" caught up with me and I tangled with the 2nd place driver. Ripping my fender up caused me to have to come in and have my trusty crew (Austin and Christopher) rip the fender off. After that I restarted 20th and worked my way all the way back up to 9th with a missing right front fender.
From there my next couple of great races came at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale, where I qualified 4th and 5th and got the lucky invert twice to start on the pole. The first race I did good for a little while, then decided I wanted to overdrive the car and fell to 13th. I learned that a little patience and calming myself down would benefit me. The second time with the lucky invert I did alright. I led till lap 10 or so, had a bad restart and was running 2nd for another 10 laps. Then I missed a shift on yet another restart and fell to 8th, and realized I wasn't doing too well on restarts. But I wasn't getting passed anymore when the cars were up to speed, so improvement from the first race at Irwindale was made.
The next race was a third one at Irwindale. I was fast in practice but then over thought qualifying and qualified 16th, so I just took my time during the race and made it up to 7th or 8th place before being taken out right near the end, but I was learning how to work my way up through traffic and it was all good.
After that I had a couple of good nights at Orange Show Speedway, beginning with a 4th place finish and running with the lead pack. And then, there was my first main event win  .
The winning night began with me qualifying up front and starting 5th after the invert. In the first couple of laps leaders tangled and I came out of that running in 2nd behind my buddy Tony Green. After we went green I worked on passing him for a couple of laps and got by him. From then on I didn't look in my mirror and just focused on my marks instead. I was told later that I had pulled out to about an 8 car lead. Then we had a red flag from another car blowing a motor. So, I was like "dang it" since there was only 5 laps to go in the race. On the final restart I again focused on hitting my marks and keeping the car pointed in the forward direction, and ended up winning my first race .
Then we went to The Bullring in Las Vegas where my dad was crowned SRL Champion ( good job dad ). I had fast car during second practice and then qualified 4th. I ran well and was running with the top group until I got throttle happy and decided to pull style points with a quick 360. So I had to restart in the back of 12 cars and raced my way back up with the lead group to finish 4th.
The last race of my season this year was at Havasu 95 Speedway, where I had an unbelievable run; I still can't believe it. I set a new track record, beating the old one by almost 2 tenths, and then won the trophy dash. The officials inverted the field of 8 cars for the main and I worked my way up to 3rd place, and then was side by side for 2nd at the line at the finish of a 25 lap race. People said if it would have been 35 laps, I would have won that one too.
So all in all, I had a wonderful year and can't wait until next year. I am currently in the process of finishing a second Legend car so next year I will be racing both dirt and asphalt if everything goes well.
I would also like to thank all of my sponsors for helping me out this year especially Dan and Kathy, because if it wasn't for them my 33 Legend wouldn't have been on the track.
- Cale #33
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