2016 SEASON

I have been terribly remiss in my posting of the racing in 2016.  I will try to summarize it in this post.  In 2016 Connelly and the #32 team earned 10 victories out of 16 races, with 3 second place finishes along with a couple of wrecks resulting in finishes "back in the pack".  We did win the track championship for the second straight year, along with the regional qualifier race held at SSR.  Additionally we won the Louisiana State Points championship.  A very successful season by any measure.

After much consideration we decided to go to the national championship race in Waterford, CT, a mere 1,400 miles away. Fortunately we were able to team up with another SSR driver who had room in his trailer for the #32 and he towed our car.

Waterford was a very fast and challenging 3/8 mile track.  There were 48 pro legends entered which made for a very formidable race.  In practice we gradually figured out the track and Connelly's times came down.  In the second to last practice he had the 5th fastest time of all cars in that session.  We did not practice again (mistake) and the next time on track was qualifying.  The track gained about 15 degrees of heat (baking in sun) and Connelly overdrove the car a little trying to get a really fast time, resulting in a 17 th place qualifying run. (slow down to go fast)  In our heat races we finished 4th in both, in heat #1 we were going for the lead, got under the leader, then got bumped in the rear knocking us into the leader sending him into the wall which sent us to the rear, he was able to get back to 4th.  All in all not too bad, we were scheduled to start 18th in the 30 car field in Saturday's Championship race.  However the Gods of weather had other ideas, it rained Saturday, we got in about 2/3 of the Young Lions race in and the sky opened up.  After about 3 hours of dragging tires and running personal cars on the track it was dry.  As they called the cars bock out to resume the YL race the sky opened up again, this time it was serious, they tried for 8 hours to dry the track, to no avail.  The humidity was close to 100% and the water had no place to go.  The race was finally declared a rainout.  What a bummer all that preparation and work down the drain, but we learned a lot about ourselves and how we rank among the best legend cars and drivers in the country.  As I was surveying the track before we left on Saturday night I thought "I have hunted  and killed ducks on ponds smaller than the one in the infield of the national championship Legends race".   Looking forward to 2017.