Saturday Night July 12, 2014

We got to the track about 2:30 as late checkout at LaQuinta was 1 pm.  We got let in to the track by the snack bar cook bringing supplies.  We used our time wisely, nut and bolted the car and Connelly waxed it, it had to look good for it's introduction.  It was so hot you could hardly breathe but we stayed in the shade and kept hydrated.  The track gates opened, we went through tech--with a new car they went through safety tech really close--we decided that with the track so hot we would wait until 20 min before practice ended to even go out.  We got out, made some hot laps and came in, the car was still good.  Then guess what, it starts to rain.  It just rained for about15 minutes and with the track so hot and just a small amount of rain it shouldn't take too long to dry.  10 to 15 minutes of several street cars making laps then another 20 hot laps with 8 legends and the track was ready.  Since we had no qualifying they decided to line up all the cars by points, and invert the entire field then throw the big dice and double invert whatever that throw indicated.  There were 11 cars in the show for tonight and since the big dice only has six spots we were going to start 10th out of 11 no matter what the invert roll came up with.  Another wrinkle--Hunter Lewis the #7 had a hundred dollar bounty placed on him--anyone who could legally and cleanly beat him would get an extra $100, if no one beats him tonight, next week it goes to $200, and if it goes to a third week it becomes $300, if he wins all three he gets the $300.  All that aside, we are still starting 10th out of 11 with an unfamiliar car, with this total field invert the higher points cars (faster) are at the rear and will take some work to get by.  Well we came from the back last week with the sedan so we will give it a try with the coupe.  In our pre-race instructions I told Connelly be safe, give the car a respectable run and have fun.

At the start we are almost dead last, within a few laps we are up to 6th, few more laps 5th.  The car looked like it was really hooked up and appeared to be handling well.  Then a caution comes out, Connelly takes the "choose" and works his way up to 3rd.  Brian McArdle and Hunter are going hard at each other for about 5 laps making 4 or 5 crossover passes in those laps, Connelly was able to close up to the back bumper of whoever was second.  For a while I thought these two are going to wreck each other and we are going to win this thing. Finally Hunter got about 2 car lengths advantage over Brian with two laps to go.  Connelly got a couple of real good runs on Brian and almost got by him for second place right at the finish.  All in all a very respectable run for our first time out, came from 10th to third and looked good doing it, no "gimmie" here Connelly earned it.  In tech Connelly kept looking under the left front suspension saying it felt like the left front brake was grabbing upon entry to the turns and he couldn't drive it as hard as he wanted to.  He had hit Joseph McArdle rear bumper with his left front tire in the turn three of lap one and drove the whole race like that.  I looked at the in-car electronic timer and we has several low 13.00's I told Connelly there couldn't be too much wrong turning those kind of lap times.  Upon checking the car at home we found that we had knocked the "toe" completely out of the front end giving the feel of the car not wanting to turn as easily.  All in all I felt that Connelly had driven a very good race, the car looked really good and with a little tweeking I feel that we will be competitive with anybody.  We have a short week as the next race in next Friday July 18.  Cant wait.