Race Recap: 03/11 - Hickory Motor Speedway

Coming off of our p.4 finish in the Season Opening Blowout at Hickory Motor Speedway, I was hopeful and confident that we would be competing for a podium for a second weekend in a row. Unfortunately, race day didn’t go nearly as well as we hoped.

Saturday morning I knew I was short on help in the pits. It seemed that the perfect storm had come along for our typical crew help and nearly everyone was booked up for the day and unavailable. On my way into the track it looked like Les was going to be the only person helping me in pit lane. This was going to be a daunting challenge for running this type of car as I am most comfortable with four and five people crewing the car. Either way, Les and I were going to give it everything we had.

Shortly before the day got rolling, my good friend Mark from Purpose Built Chassis gave me a ring and let me know that he was dropping what he already had planned on his calendar to come and help. This turned out to be a huge bonus and Mark and Les made a world of difference for the day. Mark’s wife also tagged along and filmed our feature race from the grandstands which was really, really cool! Big shoutout to them for saving the day!

Most weeks going forward this should not really be an issue as I have around eight folks on a rotation to help me out at the track. Sometime things come up and life happens though, and us racers have to react and adapt as best we can!

Unfortunately, the surprise help didn’t solve all of our problems on race day, though. We still battled hard to find a quick time throughout the day. In practice one we were ran p.12 and in second practice we ran p.11. We continued to work on the car more and more before qualifying where we were able to pick up about 3/10s of a second and secure 9th on the starting grid for the feature.

In the race it seemed like some of our setup changes had paid off and I worked my way up to p.6 or p.7, which is really where I think the car would have ended up in terms of performance if some other issues didn’t crop up during the race.

With about 30 laps to go in the race the car started to pick up a misfire; in the cockpit it felt like it could have been having problems getting fuel or possibly something in the electric that was causing the issue. The misfire only got worse as the race progressed and before long I went into full survival-mode giving everything I had not give up too many positions.

When the checkered flag came out I was running p.10 and that’s where we ended the night. We have a little break before our next race on the calendar (March 25th), so I am going to go back to the drawing board a bit with the car setup, try to find the misfire issue and resolve it and then get back out there.

Thank you to everyone who supported us this past weekend and thank you for supporting grassroots racing!

See you at the track!