Saturday Night June 6th, 2015

Got to the track and went through our normal routine, got a practice session in,  car was OK but not perfect. When they called the cars to the grid for qualifying it started to rain--dried the track than another shower, so qualifying was cancelled--dried the track again and drew pills for starting positions in the heat races. 

HEAT RACE: 

Connelly drew inside last row in heat #1, 7th out of 8, he got a good start and worked his way toward the front, by lap 5 he had the lead and went on to win the heat, followed by Brian in #44, Conner in #14, Dawson in #04, and Chad in #10.  We had a total of 16 competitors going for the win tonight, a very respectable field of cars.

FEATURE RACE:

At the drawing for heat starting positions the announcement was made that there would be an invert of 4 cars.  Connelly was to start from the outside of row #2 fourth place, but Brian failed to go through tech after the heat race and was disqualified for the heat race resulting in him having to start last in the feature, he was scheduled to start from the outside of row #1 allowing the entire outside line to move up one spot when he went to the rear.  Now Connelly is starting outside row #1.  We managed to get the lead and held on to it for the first 3 or 4 laps when the #01 spun and was collected by the #18 and #5 a red flag resulted and all three were retired having suffered significant damage.  After the restart we continued to lead, with Brian in the #44 working his way up to second.  We still had a nice lead but a caution bunched the field up putting the #44 right on our bumper.  On  the restart we got pushed all the way down the backstretch, missed our braking mark, in the next turn we had a "bump and run" executed against us and the #44 got under us going into turn #3 coming to the checker, the two cars got together coming out of turn #4, the #44 "wheel hopped" us--his right rear went over out left front---the #04 then slid sideways into the rear of our car, the #10 then got into the #04.   The #44, #32, and #04 had significant damage. The race finished with the #14 winning and the #96 in second and I think the #94 third.  The #44 finished 11th and Connelly finished 12th after leading the first 19 laps, but the lap that pays the prize money is the 20 th.  We felt like we could have been raced a little cleaner, in fact the race director warned the #44 for the pushing incident, but the wreck still happened.  Could both sides have "given a little" and avoided all of the "carnage", probably!! what caused the wreck???? opinions differ but it is what it is.  We need to get a whole new body on the car and have it checked out.  We will be at the next race if we can get it all done. This race took its toll on race cars, four had to be taken off on the roll back, the #18, the #01, the #32 and the #04, the #5, #10, #44 were able to limp off under their own power but had significant damage.  Hopefully we will get it all done and be ready for the next race.