Saturday Night August 20, 2011

After last weekend's wreck, we left the car with the McArdles to try and repair the damage and get us to the point that Connelly would be safe and at least close to where we were before the accident. We arrived at the track early, about 4:30 as we had to re-assemble the body work, go through tech inspection and shake the car down before the race. When he finally got on the track he was very loose, but with the track temp over 115 degrees it was to be expected. We put one round in and that brought it to just "fast loose" we felt that when the track cooled down the car would "come to us". It did. Brian McArdle did an outstanding job getting the car ready, he really knows his stuff.

I drew the inside second row as starting position for the heat race, when the pole sitter decided to "tag" the field for the start (he was driving a car he had never driven before and didn't want to start up front in a strange car). That moved Connelly up to the pole. He took the start and lead wire to wire for his first on track victory. He drove a beautiful race. As a result of winning his heat he got to throw the big dice to see how many cars would be inverted. He threw a 5 meaning he would now start fifth in the feature.

In the feature we ran in the top 5 or 6 for 3/4 of the race. Connelly got passed, then passed back and was running a very strong race when he spun in the back stretch (one of the stinger cars had blown an engine in the race before us and oiled the track down) I believe he hit a bit of oil that remained, no one touched him, it just jumped out from under him. He worked his way back up through a few cars, making a pass for 6th position in the last turn. A finish of 6th in a field of 13 considering the spin on lap 14 was a pretty good result, and when coupled with the heat race win, I was estatic. Looking forward to next Saturday already.