Saturday Night June 16 2012

After a two race absence we finally made it back to SSR, Connelly was chomping at the bit to get back in the car.  We had run into that I 10 traffic snarl again and got to the track an hour later than we wanted to.  We had tires to break in and we wanted to try a couple of things to get the  car to handle better.  With the temps getting into the 90's there wasn't a whole lot of speed in the track.

We had a great bunch of cars racing tonight, the #83 of Joey Padget, the #53 of Jeremy Lundy, the #7 of Hunter Lewis, the #44 of Joseph McArdle, the #59 of Terry Myers, the #55r of Ronnie Osmer, the #04 of Dawson Kenner, the # 39 of Daniel Thompson, and of course the #32 of Connelly Dubuisson.  All very good and fast cars.  After a few practice sessions on the track we were not where we wanted to be but it was time for the drivers meeting then qualifying.  Connelly qualified 3rd just 4 one hundredths of a second out of second place.we started the heat in 3rd behind the #83 of Joey Padget. got to second and hung there for a while then the #53 got under us going into turn 3 and we just couldn't hold him off.  We hung there for a couple of laps when a late caution came out and bunched the field up and we got passed by the #7, wound up 4th in the heat.

Then came the feature and things got crazy.  Joey Padget by vitue of winning the heat race threw the big dice to see how many cars would invert, he threw a 6 which ment that we would start 3rd. behind the #59 of Terry Myers with the #44 next to him and the #7 of Hunter Lewis next to us.  The #53 heard a rattle in his brand new engine and withdrew before even coming on the track.  The rest of the field settled in behind the #83 of Joey Padgett who startrd 6th.  After a false start, we had a do-over, Connelly got a good start and got under the #59 almost to the rear of the #59's door, as they went into turn one it appeared to me that the #59 came down a little on Connelly and they got together pretty hard.  Connelly came off so I could acess the damage.  he was toed out way more than we wanted, but this was a double points night and we had to get as good a finish as possible.  After the restart we were last because we had "worked" on the car during the caution.  The car wasn't handling well but he was able to maintain position.  After a few more laps there was a caution when the #7 and the #44 got together racing for the lead in turn 3 and damaged both cars.  A crew member of the #7 took exception to the official's call on the placement of the two cars involved and got into a shouting match with the flagman.  A scuffle insued when track security was called.  It wasn't officially a fight as I don't believe any punches were thrown, it was mostly pushing and shoving and grabing, although the combatants did go to the ground.  On the restart we took the choose and went to outside of the first row where we settled into second place and managed to hold on to it to the finish.  Aparently we got our rear bumper inside the right front wheel of th #55r and knocked his valve stem off and he was forced to retire.  I hate that it happened because the Osmers are great friends and Ronnie is a very good up and coming driver.  All in all we came away with a better finish than we deserved, but sometime you get one that is worse than you deserve.  We had a good points night and are thankful for that, looking forward to next Saturday already.  When we checked the car over on Monday we found that we had bent the right front steering arm and we were toed out one and 5/8 of an inch when it should have been 1/8", no wonder the car wasn't handling.