Written By: Tyler Thomas Motorsports

(October 3rd, 2007) -- What an AWESOME weekend Tyler had in Vegas for the Stars of Karting National Finals. After much anticipation and preparation Tyler put a period on the season and proved to everyone in the karting community that he will be a force to dealt with for this weekend and years to come. Coming to a temporary track layout for the finale is a driver and chassis tuners dream to set themselves apart from all of the rest. Friday practice went well for Tyler finishing in the top 7 in every one of the 5 practice sessions and 2nd in the final practice of the day.

Saturday's format for the season Finale was different than the rest of the Stars of Karting season with a qualifying session and 3 heat races with a point total to set up the starting order for the 2 finals on Sunday. Qualifying would not turn out as Tyler was expecting with Tyler qualifying in the 8th position out of the approximately 30 kart field as he did not bump draft, the race director warned about this before qualifying, most of the top 5 or 6 qualifiers were in groups bump drafting for most of the sessions but apparently the race director couldn’t see them and let them get away with it. Tyler would be looking forward to the challenge of starting 8th in every heat and going to the front.

Heat 1 : Tyler moved from 8th to 3rd in turn 1 of the heat and by lap 2 was leading and with 2 corners to go a cheap shot on the kink on the back straight by the “national points leader" would get Tyler out of shape and would lose 2 spots to come to the flag in 3rd With Dylan Kwasniewski taking the win.

Heat 2 : Tyler would start from 8th again and after finally clearing a challenging team mate for 5th Tyler would gain ground on the lead pack that pulled out over 2.5 seconds on him and by the flag was within 3 kart lengths of 4th place the last kart in the lead pack.

Heat 3 : With this heat coming early Sunday morning Tyler would again start from his 8th place qualifying position and would take it straight to the front in the matter of 2 laps and would win the 3rd and final heat that would put him on the pole for the finals.

A nice surprise for Sunday would start out with the Speed vision camera crew installing an in kart camera on Tyler’s kart for the finals for a Lucas Oil on the Edge show to be televised in November on the Versus channel.
That was really cool!

Final 1 : Starting from the pole Tyler would have a battle in the early stages of the race with the "current points leader" but Tyler would pull out to a impressive 10-15 kart lead with 3 laps to go and when the checkered fell and a conservative last lap Tyler would cross the line with a 5 kart length lead to take the WIN! Tyler was not finished, he was exited but instantly focused on final 2 after the race he said "1 down and 1 to go lets go win the second one!!"

Final 2 : Starting from pole again Tyler would battle more in the early stages of the race until the kart came in and he would get no further back than 3rd and would cross the line to take WIN # 2 of the weekend wit a sweep of the Stars National Finals.

Tyler would miss the championship by 24 points but Tyler was more proud to have over come some of the circumstances towards the end of the year which cost Tyler the championship and also 1 Stars and 1 National win with poor decisions from 1 race director and the same opponent all of that disappointment went away when Tyler had the performance of his young career this weekend. He did exactly what he had to do to win and for an 11 year old to dig down to do what he did was just incredible and very impressive.

A special thanks to Tyler’s sponsors who have supported him and believed in him through the years--
Grand Products, MiSi, Ribtect, Citizens Security Bank, Remington Investigations, B.T.Machine,inc., Woltjer Racing Engines, Fleming Racing Engines, Walters Web Design, Prospeed, On Track Promotions.