Saturday March 17, 2012

Saturday afternoon found us running late getting to the track, Connelly's younger sister had a soccer game that we had to attend, by the time we got out of town we were an hour late. By the time we got to the track, got registered and teched we only had a little over a half hour of practice left. It wouldn't have been too bad, but the car that was handling so well last race went to junk on us. It just wouldn't roll through the center of the turns and was sliding the front end up the track. The track temp was 94o and we should have been loose. I made a slight adjustment which helped some, but we were still tight, made another adjustment, still tight, then practice ended. The track finally got the transponders in so we were able to qualify on time. Connelly laid down a pretty fair lap, 13.20 for a fourth starting spot out of 11 cars. As usual we had a very good field of cars. The very fast #53 of Jeremy Lundy, Both of the 44's the blue driven by Joseph McArdle, with Billy Elmore, Jr. in the silver car. In addition Joey Padget in his very quick #83, the always fast #7 of Hunter Lewis, of cource the #32 with Connelly Dubuisson doing the driving. The much improved #4 of Tucker Yance, along with the #39 of Daniel Thompson, the #55r of Ronnie Osmer, the #59 of Terry Myers, and Andrew Johnson driving the #66. A very strong field again this weekend. Connelly's fourth qualifying spot gave him the outside front row in his heat race, alongside of #83 of Joey Padgett. At the start Connelly was able to get to the bottom in a half a lap, then coming out of turn four got under the #83 they touched and Connelly got dead sideways (you could read his number from up the track) he was able to maintain 2nd position for a couple of laps then coming out of turn two spun, which put him last, since there were only three laps to go there was no "choose", in three laps he was able to work his way up to 3rd. Which gave him outsde of third row (6th) starting position in the feature race.

Eleven cars answered the call for the feature, after the start it took Connelly a full lap to get to the bottom of the track where he could race, by then he was 8th, he then worked his way back up to 5 th when he got into a long slide down the back stretch and lost 3 positions, worked his way back up to about 6th when the 55r and 66 got together and as a result of a case of mistaken identity by the race director, Connelly got sent to the back for causing the accident?? oh well, all this and the car is handling worse (the track is cooling off and getting tighter)--just what we didn't need. We get back to racing Connelly just completes a pass on the 39 for 5th and Joey Padget blows an oil line off his engine and oils the track down causing the silver #44 to spin right in front of Connelly leaving just a narrow lane between the car and the wall on the back straightaway, Connelly managed to squeeze through and not hit anything or anybody. Joey was finished for the night. After a lengthy cleanup delay we got back underway with a "green, white, checker" Connelly wound up finishing 6th. It could have been a lot worse, we put ourselves in position to get run over by the #4 on two occasions, Tucker skifully avoided us, and that squeeze between the silver #44 and the wall was too close for comfort. Considering we were dealing with an ill handling race car and several near misses, I was overjoyed to just be able to push the #32 back on the trailer in one piece. Oh well, we'll give it another try next race on the 31st. Come on out to Sunny South Raceway and treat yourself to some very exciting and action filled racing.