Friday Night August 15, 2014

Friday night Aug 15 found the #32 crew at the pit gate for about 5:20.  We got to our pits, set up, went through registration and tech and got the  car ready to break in tires.  We were breaking in a new set of right sides.  Two heat cycles with a water cool down in between got us halfway there.  Need another two cycles at the next race, OK for now.  We put our race tires on and did a test set, then put another set on trying to decide which to use in qualifying.  We got some real good times in practice on the second set and decided to qualify on those.  In qualifying we didn't get close to our practice times, and we qualified second a full tenth of a second behind Hunter Lewis who won the pole.  I think Connelly was overdriving the car, trying too hard.

There were 14 cars registered for tonight's event, they were in order of qualifying: Hunter Lewis #7, Connelly Dubuisson #32, Bred West #94, Robbie Johnston #96, Conner Okrzesik #14, Ramsey Whittington #4, Andrew Johnson #66, Dustin Harvison #15, Joseph McArdle #44jr, Brian McArdle #44, Chad Robinson #10, Michael Beasley #1, Treyce Capers #01, and Jayme Corry #18, a very capable and fast field.

After qualifying the race director threw the "big dice" and rolled a four meaning that they would invert the top four qualifiers, which put us starting from position #3.  We would rather start from the #3 position than the #2 spot as it is sometime tough getting to the inside lane where you can actually race and pass someone.

At the start there was a spin before all the cars had taken the green flag, so a complete restart.  The restart was clean and by the end of lap one Connelly was only about 3 feet from the lead.  by the end of lap #2 we had the lead, a spin brought out another caution, restart went well. We only lead two laps when Hunter Lewis in the #7 got by us for the lead.  So on to plan "B", fall back and ride saving our tires for a run at the lead late in the race.  So much for plan "B" a  late caution let everybody's tires cool off, but no big loss we were still in second place and we would see if we had anything for the #7.  The race restarted with nine laps to go, Connelly latched on to the rear bumper of the #7 and stayed within 3 or 4 car lengths of him for  the remainder of the race--we just didn't have anything for him--don't know if we missed something in the setup or we ran our tires off the car but we just couldn't get our lap times down to where they needed to be.  Giving us a second place finish. Connelly was very disappointed as he felt he hadn't driven hard enough.  He is still learning the coupe but he is getting it. We will try to improve for the next race.  The top 5 finishing order was the #7, #32, #96, #44 and I believe the #94 wound up 5th.  All in all a good race, not a lot of passing up front, but back in the pack there was some really good racing, hey--good racing is good racing no matter where you find it.

On another note we had a professional photographer come to the track and take a bunch of photos.  I'll post some when we get them back.  Looking forward to the Aug. 29th race already