Congrats and welcome back! If your first lap out of the pits you notice that you car is really sluggish, is blowing a lot of smoke, not accelerating properly and/or flaming out but as you do additional laps (warming up & heat saturating the chassis and engine case) you notice performance starting to get better then it's usually a pretty good indication that you engine is set very rich. In a nutshell the the flameout's are caused by the engine loading up with fuel and basically extinguishing the plug. So leaning the engine down as you did is the proper fix. It sounds like you engine is not properly tuned and you like how it is performing. If so next time out just fire up the engine on the box and warm it up blipping the throttle for a few minutes to heat saturate the case and chassis. Then let it come back down to idle and check the idle speed. If the idle is low that is an indication that you ambient conditions have changed since the last time that you ran (resulting in a reduction in air density), changing the air/fuel ratio of your engine and your engine is now rich and will need to be leaned out. It the idle is high that indicates the opposite, the air density has increased, changing your air/fuel ratio and you engine is now lean. Do not adjust the idle stop screw and hence your air gap, leave that alone..... instead adjust your needles.

Lets for sake of this description say that your fired up your engine at the next race day and after warming up on the box as described above you noticed that you idle was now high, that means your engine for the current ambient conditions is set lean so i have to be a little extra careful because running too lean can damage your engine. I then start off but adjusting my LS needle to get a smooth, steady idle by richening the LS needle 1-2 hours, blip the throttle to clear out engine and then allow to come back down to idle and check idle speed. I keep on adjusting the LS until I get a smooth, steady idle then put the car on the track to start working on the HS needle. Again I know that the engine was lean so I'm going to be a little extra careful about things and do 1-2 gently laps to see how the engine performs and then come in and check temp and how it idles. Most likely right off the bat the engine is going to feel really peppy (it was lean after all), I will have noticed it's not blowing a lot of smoke on the straight and I may find that the temp is already around normal operating temp after 1-2 laps. So to be safe I'm then going to richen the HS 1-2 hours. Because your HS needle affects your "overall fuel delivery" when you adjust your HS it also adjusts your LS fuel delivery the same way. So we now have to see how the LS has been affected and that we do by blipping the throttle to clear out the engine and then check the idle speed. The idle should have slowed down (as we richened the overall fuel delivery) so we would need to lean the LS 1-2 hours, blip throttle, check idle again and if ok toss it on the track and do some more laps to check top end and engine feel. Keep on repeating that until you have the engine working like you like and you have re-tuned your engine for the change in weather conditions. Hope that helps!!!