Saturday March 31, 2012

Saturday night brought the 32 team to SSR early!! like 4:05, right after the gates opened. The Osmers #55r, pulled in 5 minutes after us, their comment was, "my God you know you are late when the Dubuisson's get here before you". The early arrival was good as it gave us time to get registered, go through tech and not have to rush like crazy. It also gave us time to sort the car out as we were pushing pretty bad last race. Couple of adjustments and the car settled down and handled much better. In qualifying Connelly posted a 13.124 which was good enough for 5th place out of 13 cars. The first five cars were seperated by only .04 of a second -- real tight. There were the usual competitors; the 7, 53, 44jr, 44, 59, 55r, 4, 39, 94, the 94 (yellow) 08, a new driver from Houston driving his fourth race in the #81 and of cource Connelly in the #32.

Connelly's 5th place qualifying earned him the inside of second row in his heat race. He was in the heat with the super fast #7 of Hunter Lewis and the #53 of Jeremy Lundy. He started 3rd and ran in that position for the whole 10 laps never being more than 2 or 3 car lengths behind the #53, which is where he finished. That finish earned him inside 3rd row for the feature.

Connelly got off to a fair start in the feature and settled down in 5th or 6th place for the first 7 or 8 laps, which was his plan, to save his "stuff" for the last 8 or 10 laps. Then it got rough for us. During a caution we lost our brakes, thank God it was during the caution, he came off and got out of the car forgetting to unplug the Raceiver, broke the wire to his earpieces, so now he will have no Raceiver if he gets back out. The race had now been red flaged trying to get the lineup straight, which gave us a couple of minutes to find the brake problem. We found it, the heim that connects the brake pedal to the master cylinder had the nut that secures it vibrate off, thus NO BRAKES. We found the heim and the rod that activetes the master cylinder put it back on, still no nut, one of the Bandolero owners had a compartmented box full of assorted nuts and bolts, within seconds we found the right one, got it secured, Connelly got buckled in and got back on track just as the red flag was lifted. Since he had come off the track and worked on the car he would have to start last. No problem at least we were back in the action although from 13th position. He made a couple of passes, took the "choose" on a couple of occasions and got up to 4th on one of the restarts. Then he and the 39 got together we got spun and hit in the driver's door. No serious damage. But guess what?? back to the rear of the field again. After working his way back up to 6th, he was trying to get past the #44, who was trying to get past the #94. Connelly was giving them plenty of room, but the #44 and #94 got together and wrecked, Connelly had no place to go and he plowed into the back of the #44 tearing off both front fenders, the bumper and grille were destroyed, the oil cooler was pushed back into the front of the engine. No suspension parts appeared to be damaged, we won't know until we scale the car this weekend. At this writing two new fenders, a new grille, bumper and oil cooler bracket have all been installed. We plan to scale and "nut and bolt" the car tomorrow and take the fenders off and get them to the paint shop on Monday and be ready for next Saturday night at SSR. Much of our misfortune could have been avoided had we checked the 1/4 nut that holds the brake m/c rod in place. You can bet that has already been added to our off weekend inspection protocol. All things considered, it could have been a lot worse. We tore up a couple of hundred dollars worth of parts, but Connelly just got his pride brused a little. If that brake heim had come off at full throttle we could have been in big trouble. But we were able to push the car into the trailer and it appears none the worse for wear, and we are already looking forward to next Saturday night at SSR. Come out and see some really good racing.