Two Month Check In!

Good morning all!

Happy hot Monday! Its been a minute since we've been here to write a formal race write up, but between life outside the track and a handful of rainouts, we decided it would be best to lump them into one!

Community Bank NA 150

What can I say about this day other than we went from good to bad like a yoyo for the entirety of the day. We fought the car hard when it came time to qualify and had to get into the show through the B-Feature, but with a win in that we started tail of the field in 24th. Through all the green flag laps and a single caution, we managed to find ourselves inside the top 10 in 9th place by the time we got the 5 to go signal from the flagger. It wasn't up until then when we got a sudden vibration in the front of the car out of nowhere. Coming out of 2 with 4 laps to go was when we found the vibration came from a flat RF tire, sending us wall riding into 3, but getting off of the track and out of the way for the rest of the racers. A caution came a lap after that, but we had already went down a lap, so we fired a different RF tire on and finished off the heartbreaking race in 20th.

Mekkselsen RV Memorial Day Classic

This race was a little less exciting and heartbreaking, and we fought some of the same issues handling-wise that we dealt with 3 weeks previous. 24 cars showed up and all of us started the feature. We did the best we could to try to adjust the car to find some speed for the feature, but the thing drove like a dump truck on the interstate. We went down a handful of laps, we salvaged an 18th place finish, but kept the car in one piece, meaning we could take it back to the shop and get a handle on why the thing wouldn't drive the way we know its capable of.

CCV Double Feature (or not) Night

One of the lovely days where we had to fight rain, we managed to make it through one feature completely, and only 8 laps into the second. We managed to miss qualifying through the heat race, and did not have a consi due to trying to move the show along. We started 15th and fell back from the main pack fast, but about halfway through the feature the car started to come alive, and we caught back up to the smaller pack in front of us. We worked had at the cars ahead of us, and by the time we got the checkers we had made it up to 12th, once again keeping thew car in one piece and having some good note of the setup changes that we made from the week previous that seemed to help us for this race. We started 12th in the second feature, and had made it up to 10th before the rain came and washed the night away, pushing our second feature to the following Thursday Night.

Preston's Kia Independence Day Spectacular

This past Thursday was our best night in a long time by FAR! We unloaded and put on our impounded tires from the second feature, and went right up to 3rd quickest on speed charts. We bolted on our new sticker tires for the second half of the first practice to get a heat cycle in, and kept them on for the start of the second practice to get them where we needed, and wound up 5th quickest on the charts. We started the first feature in 10th place and quickly realized we were going to have one lane to work with on the night. We kept our nose down and picked off cars one by one, and with only one caution made our way up to 5th, catching the lead pack in the last handful of laps. Had the feature been a 65 lapper we may have ended with a trophy, but we were happy enough to drive through the field. Come the second feature we started 12th, missing a qualifying spot through the heat race by one car. Once again we figured the track would stick to one lane, but slowly making our way through the field we found that there may be something for us up top. After clearing a car and some lappers, we made the decision to stay up high, and raced door to door with the current points leader for over 20 laps, just edging him out at the line by half a car for a 6th place finish!

What's Next?

As far as our next races go... We are planning to run THIS THURSDAY for Bobby Labonte Night, and keep up the momentum that we've been building as the season has progressed. We have bene much more comfortable with the handling of the car, and hope that this race could be the one to capitalize on and get a trophy (or a win!)

Post time for Thursday is 7PM. You can watch in person at Thunder Road, or online @ NESTN.TV