July 19,2013

Friday July 19 found us at the track a little early as we had some tires that needed breaking in, it seems like we are always breaking in tires, but with only an hour and 15 minutes of practice you just don't have enough time to test your race setup and break in tires, about the best you can hope for is to get a couple of test runs on your setup and maybe one or two tire heat cycles in the tires before practice is over so it takes at least two race days to break in tires if you are lucky.  We got registered, went through tech and were in the grid waiting for the track to be opened for practice when it starts raining.  We lost over an hour and a half  drying the track and only  got one practice session in for our race setup, we were able to run the new tires for several laps while drying the track but I do not know how much heat we got into the tires on a cold half wet track.  We got the track dry and began qualifying.

There were six cars on hand for tonight's event:  the #7 of Hunter Lewis, the #44 of Joseph McArdle, the #66 of Andrew Johnson, the #32 of Connelly Dubuisson, the #04 of Dawson Keener, the #96 of Robbie Johnston.

QUALIFYING:  The track had a lot of grip in it and the pole was won by the #7 with a blistering 12.998, Connelly was second with a 13.090, third was the #66, fourth was #44, fifth the #04, and sixth the #96.

HEAT RACE: The heat race went off without a hitch with the cars finishing pretty much in the same order that they qualified.  Hunter (#7) threw a 5 with the big dice which inverted the top 5 for the feature.

FEATURE RACE:  With the 5 car invert the #04 was on the pole, the #44 outside front row, #66 inside second row, Connelly #32 outside second row, #7 inside 3rd row, with #96 outside row three.   It was only three days away from the full moon, but the effect was there.  On lap 3 while passing the #66 Connelly and he got together, spinning the #66, Connelly managed to save his car and was able to hold position on restart while the #66 had to go to the rear as his spin brought out the caution.  On lap 5 the #7 and #44 got together right in front of Connelly and Connelly had no place to go and "wheel hopped" the #7 knocking out our "toe" and changing the left side camber.  This affected the handling of the car and we were just not as good after that. A few laps later the #44 spun right in front of Connelly, who narrowly missed him.  Now we are in third behind the #04 and #7.  The #7 got by the #04 and Connelly was in the process of making the pass for second going into turn 3 his right front brake locked up and he almost hit the wall--back to last place.  On the last lap the #66 dove under the #04 and they collided and stuck together coming to a stop 100 feet before the finish line, Connelly drove under them for a 4th place finish.  With us going to the rear on 3 occasions and cars taking the "choose" Connelly made 10 passes--there were only six cars in the race--he passed the #66 4 times.  What a crazy race, but with all that went on we were very lucky to come away with a 4th place finish.  We will go home and go through the suspension with a fine tooth comb and get our handling back and try to win one of these things.  Looking forward to the next race.