Saturday Night August 11, 2012

Saturday morning we woke up to a tremendous line of thunderstorms.  They passed and went out into the Gulf to agravate the fish.  We got to the track went through tech and got ready to go out for some parctice.  Connelly said the car felt wicked fast.  He ran about ten laps increasing his speed on each lap.  He was on Joseph's tires and we wanted to try the car just like they had run it last.  Joseph went out with his #44 primary car (we had put our #32 on the car he loaned us)  his oil filter loosened up and began to leak.  He saw the oil on the track and pulled in and the engine was refilled with oil.  The oil was cleaned up and practice resumed.  We felt like we needed at least 30 or so laps of practice to get Connelly used to the feel of the car as coupes have a slightly different "feel" than a sedan.  In the next session Joseph blew the engine,  he put the #3 connecting rod through the side of the block.  That put things in a totally different perspective.  How can we race Joseph's back up car with our motor when he dosen't have a car to drive and he is currently the points leader?  Connelly went up to Mr. Joe and said we weren't going to drive the backup car with our engine and that Joseph could drive it, at first Mr. Joe said no but we insisted.  We are in 3rd place for points and a no points night would really hurt.  The #7 team brings a backup car that they are trying to sell to the races and they very generously let Connelly use it.  We really didn't want to put the car in jepordy by mixing it up with the rest of the cars, we just made a light qualifying run, ran about 4 or 5 laps in the heat race before retiring finishing last, ran half the race easy in the feature then retired with a 7th place finish.  We were in full points conservation mode.  We lost 17 points to the 4th place car but still are in 3rd by 36 points.  We may use this race as our "drop" race,  each team must drop their lowest points race of the season before the final points calculation is done.  All in all a very interesting night and thanks to the generosity of the #7 team we were able to salvage the night. 

The Racing:  The race was reletavely uneventful with no cautions with the #7 fininshing first, #32 (Joseph) second, #55 third, #39 fourth, #33 fifth, #53 sixth, #13 (Connelly put his little sister's soccer number 13 on the side of the "loaner" in red masking tape) finished seventh.  However the saga is not over yet, we loaned Mr. Joe the engine we ran last year in our sedan until they get their motor back from Charlotte so musical motors/cars contiues.  Currently we plan to race the #32 coupe (Joseph's #44 backup car) next race on the 25th of August.  Come out and see how this saga plays out and treat yoursellf to some really good racing.