Saturday June 23, 2012

After all of the craziness of last Saturday's race (there must have been a full moon somewhere) we were back at Sunny South Raceway with the #32 repaired and ready to go.  We checked the morning newspaper and found that the I-10 was going to have two lanes closed all weekend, so we took an alternate route and got to the track ten minutes after the gates opened.  We got the car registered and teched got on the track and we were OK but the track temp was 119 degrees and loose.  We found out what we needed to know and finally got the last set of tires broke in (I would still like to get one more heat cycle in them).

 We had the usual competitors available the #44 of Joseph McArdle, the #7 of Hunter Lewis, our old friend Tucker Yance was back with his repaired #4, the #04 of Dawson Kenner, the #39 of Daniel Thompson, the #55r of Ronnie Osmer, the #59 of  Terry Myers, and of course the #32 of Connelly Dubuisson.

Qualifying, we qualified third behind Joseph McArdle in his #44, and the #7 of Hunter Lewis. We were 2 one hundredths of a second behind the #7 and about a tenth of a second behind the #44, not where we wanted to be but the car just seemed to not like the heat.  We were a full tenth and a half of a second off of where we were three races ago. 

In the heat race we started third and advanced to second by the end of the first lap, the #7 got under us and passed a few laps later coming out of turn 4.  Then both the #7 and Connelly passed the #44.  Connelly finished second in the heat race out of 8 cars, we still weren't as fast as we would have liked, but we finished 2 car lengths behind the #7 and about 5 lengths ahead of the #44.  Not bad for a car that was slightly off.

Feature Race; Hunter Louis the #7 driver, by virtue of his heat race win threw the big dice to determine the number of cars to be inverted.  He threw a 6 putting us in the 5th starting position.  The #04 who was to start on the pole opted to go to the rear of the field to avoid a situation like the one at the start of last weeks race.  By rule that moved the whole inside line up one position, now we are starting 3rd.  At the start, Connelly got a good start and was second coming out of turn two, he ran about 1 to 2 car lengths behind the #39 for a few laps then we were able to get under the #39 and take the lead for a couple of laps.  Joseph got under us in the #44, and he and Connally battled for the lead for a couple of laps.  Connelly finally over drove turn two and got real loose and slid up the track and went from fighting for the lead to fourth in one quick move.  Connelly was able to re pass both the #39 and the #7 and settled into second again, by now Joseph in the #44 was a half a straightaway ahead of us.  Now the bizarre comes back into play, as the flagman prepares to display the white flag indicating one lap to go, the handle of the flag accidently pushes the button on  the flag stand that turns the caution lights on around the track, so now the flagman is trying to end the race with a checker flag and everybody is slowing down to honor the caution lights being accidentally activated.  The flagman and race director decided that the only fair thing to do was to give the field a "green-white-checker" finish.  This gives the field the green flag to restart, then gives the white flag indicating one lap to go then the checker flag ending the race.  The finishing order was; the #44 first, the #32 second, the #39 third, the #04 fourth, the #55r fifth, the #59 sixth, the #7 who had mechanical issues was seventh, and the #4 who also had mechanical issues was eighth.  Not a bad night considering we were a little bit off, but we brought the #32 back in one piece and have already begun looking for that one and a half tenth of a second.  Hopefully we will get it back in time for the next race as we are certainly looking forward to the upcoming race this Saturday night.