Double Points Night Saturday 6-18-11

Saturday 6-18-11 found the DMS 32 team at our home away from home Sunny South Raceway. It was a scalding hot day, temps in the high 90's with accompanying humidity, however a fairly nice breeze came up as it got closer to dark which made it bearable. There were a fair number of legends on hand (Father's day weekend). We had 6 Young Lyons/Semi Pro and also 6 Pro/Masters. They ran the heat races by classes, but combined classes for the feature. Connelly drew inside second row as his heat starting position. At the start of the heat he missed a shift and fell back, then got loose coming out of turn 2 on the second lap got passed and was running in 5 th position. You could throw a blanket over the 2nd through 5 th place cars. They were all about the same speed. Coming out of turn 4 for the checkerd flag the #14 got into the #44jr with both spinning giving Connelly the third place finish in the heat. He ran some very respectable times in competition with his fastest lap being a 13.55 but all were very consistant in the mid 13.5's and low 13.6's.

Feature race: New wrinkle, the winner of the heat race throws a huge 3 foot cube foam rubber dice off of the tower stairs with the resulting number thrown being the number of cars inverted at the start of the feature. As a result of the dice throw they inverted 5 putting Connelly on the outside pole with a swarm of screaming hornets on his rear bumper. He was somewhat apprehensive, but I told him sooner or later he would have to start up there and if he ever wanted to do the "choose" the same situation would present itself. He got frieght trained on the inside by almost the entire field, ran a good race with fairly good times and even made a pass or two. He said that he was so concerned about the cars behind him he didn't look out of his front winshield for the first 3 laps. He was "mirror driving" his little butt off. He did come home with a 1st place troophy for the Young Lyons/Semi Pro class. I don't know how that happened because he finished toward the back of the pack, but we didn't ask NO QUESTIONS!!!!!!! All in all a very successful outing and he brought the car home in one piece. He tells me that he needs to be loosened up a little bit, so we will give that a try. If he ain't sliding through the turns he ain't happy. We'll see how happy he is after the next race on July 16.

Memorial Day Race To Glory, and Regional Qualifier

On Memorial Day weekend Sunny South Raceway hosted its 6th annual Race to Glory and Legends Regional Qualifier. The Friday the 27th was the standard format ie. heat then feature program for all classes. On Saturday night the 28 we had timed qualifying for all classes with 20 lap features for the Bandoleros, Stingers and Pro-Challenge with a 40 lap feature for the Legends. There was a good field of really fast cars on hand to challenge SSR's 1/4 mile banked oval. There were 21 Legend cars available. For Friday's program they ran the Semi-Pro and Young Lyons separately as a class (13 YL/SP) and (8 Pro/ Masters). There were cars from Charlotte, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Nevada and I believe one from Texas. Additionaly we had our friends The Massaro family fron Gadsden, AL; Tommy, Traci, the upcoming driver Ryan and his brother (whose name escapes me at this late hour) on hand.

These were to be Connelly's third and fourth legend race, and he had never qualified on time before. His qualifying time was OK a 13.74 which he was not pleased with, but all in all it was a fair lap and gave him the 17 th starting position out of 21 cars for the 40 lap race on Saturday.

On Friday he drew fourth starting position for the heat got to third, then got snookered on a restart and fell to fourth which is where he finished. He had a fairly good feature passed a few cars, then had them take the "choose" and go up to the front and he would have to pass them again. He wound up 9th in the feature out of 13 cars.

On Saturday, I told him to stay in touch with the pack for the first 20 laps than try to make some passes in the second half of the race. He did that and stayed out of trouble. At around the 3/4 point in the race our friend Ryan Massaro got together with the white #91 (Ryan's car is the black and white#91) with the white #91 going for a two flip ride, landing on its wheels against the back wall just about destroying the white #91, fortunately no one was injured. There were a couple of other incidents that required a red flag situation, but no injuries only burised pride.

Connelly wound up finishing 12th. He did get lapped but he managed to lap at least one car that was still running at the end. Man, they had some strong cars there. The winning car came out of Charlote with one of the Plot brothers winning and his brother second. Local driver Cody Logan was third. All in all it was a very good experience for Connelly and the #32 team. Liked to worked me to death. Had to break two sets of tires, we had the hood blow off in practice, I think Connelly forgot to put the front hood pin in, had to repair that. Also in practice had a weld break on the muffler it came off but we were able to retrieve it and Cliff Osmer found a 110 v mig welder and welded the tab back on with the help of Tommy Massaro. I used the old racing fix of two loops of bailing wire to insure that the muffler stayen in place, it worked and we came home with our muffler. As mentioned before Connelly got a lot of "seat time" and I got a lot of practice fixing stuff, and we brought the car home in one piece, all in all a good weekend.