2014 Season Wrap Up

Well the 2014 racing season is in the books and as we always do, it is time to look back and assess our performance.  Our objectives at the start of the season were:

      1.  Win the track championship in the Pro Division--last year's performance dictated we move up.
      2.  Win at least 2 races.
      3.  To be competitive with consistent podium finishes.
      4.  To race everyone fairly without having to foul to pass.
      5.  To have Connelly grow his racing skills.

In order to give Connelly the best equipment we could we had our engine rebuilt, after the  rebuild it dyno'ed  real strong.  We went through the chassis and replaced all of the trailing arm bolts, replaced the rear trailing arms out of an abundance of caution, and checked everything to within an inch of its life.  We also ordered two new sets of tires.  At the open test session in Feb. the car was very strong, and we felt like we had done all we could do in preparation for 2014.  At the test session  Hunter Lewis showed up with a "new" '34 Ford coupe.  I recognized this car as one I had seen out of the Atlanta area and it was indeed a strong car.  We thought that we had stepped up our  game, but so did Hunter.  In this game if you are standing still, you are going backwards.

The first race of the season had us running fourth for most of the race behind Brian, Joseph and Hunter, when Hunter  got a little loose (he didn't quite have it dialed in to SSR yet) and we got by him right at the end for third, but it was obvious that he was going to be a force to be dealt with.  The next several races saw Hunter in the #7 totally dominate the Pro division, so much so that I called our setup man and told him what was going on and we needed some more speed.  He made a couple of suggestions which we implemented and we picked up a few hundredths of a second--good, but not good enough.  Finally he suggested that we buy the sister car to Hunter's that was available as a roller and put our engine and seat in it, as we had this freshly rebuilt engine, and see what happens.

In the meantime Hunter had become so dominant that they put a bounty out on him.  It was a three race deal where whoever could fairly beat him would get an extra $100 in the first race $200 if you beat him in the 2nd race of the bounty and $300 if you got him in the 3rd race, if nobody beats him in any of the three bounty races then Hunter got the $300. 

We went with the Atlanta area coupe had our "stuff" put on it got it home had it painted put numbers on it and rented the track for a test session. The car was good, the next night was a race.  We managed a very close third.  The next race rained out which brought us to Aug 1st.  That race was our break out race, we won the whole thing including the bounty.  Our first win of the season.  We then went on to win two more races for a total of three.  Of the 16 races that were run at Sunny South Raceway we wound up with 3 first place, 3 seconds and 7 thirds, 13 podium finishes out of 16 races.  Not bad!!!!
We also made a "road trip" to Monroe, La and raced at Revolution Raceway a 3/8 mile banked concrete oval track.  We got a 6th (should have been a 4th) in the first race, a 5th in the second feature and a 3rd in the last race of the weekend (was right on the rear bumper of the second place car and moving up at the finish).  As Connelly learned the track his speeds picked up considerably and we came home with a sense of accomplishment.

Achieving  our goals:
   1. We finished second in the championship by 35 points.
   2. We won 3 races.
   3. We were definitely competitive with 13 podium finishes of 16 races.
   4. We raced everyone clean.
   5. Connelly made tremendous gains in his racing skills.

If we could have another year like 2014 we would take it in a heartbeat.  We are already looking forward to 2015, can't wait.