Connelly had been after me to take him to an out of town race, well Revolution Park Raceway in Monroe, La was having its final race of the season this weekend. They do a unique program for the first and last race of the year. They have a regular race on Friday night, and another regular program on Saturday night, then at 12:01 on Sunday morning they start another race. (INEX the sanctioning body for the Legends and Bandos) does not allow more than one points race at any track on the same day, so by starting one minute past midnight it is legal for INEX points, and you can get three races worth of points in 2 days--long days but still doable. We had never seen this track before and it is a good one, 3/8 of a mile high banked concrete, wicked fast. It does have a couple of really bumpy sections which can upset the cars, one is at the entrance to turn 3 the other is at the exit of turn 4, so you have to be real careful. It is a 4 1/2 hour drive from Metairie, but it is all interstate and a good portion did not have too much traffic so it wasn't too bad.
We checked into the motel only a mile away and went to the track. Picked our a pit stall, went through tech and walked out to look at the track. It was indeed impressive, it looked like Talledega compared to Sunny South, Connelly couldn't wait to get out on it. We fuelled the car checked air pressures and went out. Man that track was fast, he had to learn how to drive it, it was so much different from Sunny South. Fortunately Hunter Lewis #7 from Sunny South was there and he helped us with information on driving lines air pressures and setup. We ran several test sessions and improved our times each time out. They don't qualify at this track, you draw a chip with a number to determine your starting position in the heat race, and the finish in the heat determines your starting position in the feature.
Friday Night Race:
We drew a high number chip which started us last in the heat. There were 17 cars available so they had 3 heats. They only start 20 cars in the feature so tonight all cars will qualify. There were 6 cars in our heat and we started 6th due to our chip draw. Connelly worked his way up through the field while being very careful as we still had 3 points races at Sunny South and we are locked in a points race for second with an outside shot at first. Connelly finished a strong second which would start us 6th in the feature. In the feature he worked his way through traffic and was going for third and touched the left rear tire of the #91 with our right front tire causing Con to have to back off and we went from going for third to 6th. It was right after a caution and all the cars were bunched up and they "freight trained" us. Not too bad for our first attempt at this new venue. Sixth out of 17 first time out, would like to have had third, but the car didn't have a scratch on it so we'll take it. This was just a points race no trophy or money.
Saturday Night Race:
We drew high number for both the Sat night and Sunday morning race, same format as last night. Started last for the heat due to high chip draw, worked our way up to third which put us deep in the field for the feature. We had a good feature run going got up to 4th going for third when the #28 got into us, his left side tires slid into our right side tires causing a caution which knocked us back a spot or two. After the restart we worked our way back up to a fifth place finish, which paid out $125.00 with 15 or more cars. Connelly was beginning to figure out this track.
Sunday Morning Race:
12:01 a.m. had the pit manager calling for cars to the grid. This late race would not have a heat just a feature of 17 cars with starting positions determined by chip draw. We started slightly past mid pack and worked our way up toward the front. Slightly past mid race we were making the pass on Andrew Johnson #66 (a Sunny South driver) for third, after which we ran down the second place driver and got to his rear bumper but just ran out of laps, giving us a third place finish. If we had
3 or 4 more to go?? who knows. Overall a very good experience for Connelly and myself, we had to set the car up for a different track, with some help from #7, learn how to drive it, and appointed ourselves at this new track very respectfully and got three races of INEX points. Our fast lap of this feature was 16.39 second which equates to 82.37 MPH, our best Sunny South lap was 12.893 seconds which is 69.803 MPH on the 1/4 mile track, like I said this track is wicked fast.
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