9/20/03
Sooo....the run whatcha brung event finally arrived. Not nearly the car count that I was expecting. We decided to keep it simple and limited our big experiment to sail panels. It was immediately apparent that the experiment was a failure during warmups. The car was hellacious for about a lap and a half. I was just about flat footing it for the 1st lap, but then the car got horribly tight. We ended up going to our Saturday night set up and the car was much better. I started 4th in the heat and just about wrecked the guy in front of me at the start when he couldn't get up to speed. I managed to survive that and quickly made my to the front. That put us 3rd for the feature. Jimmy and I ended up changing 2 torsion bars and a few other things for the feature and we were ready to go. I took me about 4 or 5 laps to get to second, and then it was follow the leader for the rest of the race behind the 39. We had a few restarts, but I really couldn't do more than show him my nose. On the last restart on lap18 I tried following the 39 up top, which opened the door for the 14 to shoot by me on the bottom. And that's how it ended, finishing 3rd. At least we didn't wreck. :) That looks like the end for the season. No Syracuse, no Middletown.
9/13/03
Rain, rain, rain.
9/6/03
The Race of Kings. In keeping with the spirit of last Saturday, this week was a challenge. Jimmy and I got the car ready for Saturday, replacing all the bent stuff in the front end and mounting all the new body panels ( thanks Pete!). And then it was sit and wait time. Dan had the 358 short block done early in the week, but we were waiting on a new set of heads, which weren't due to be finished till sometime Friday. And then I got the call on Friday that one of the heads was junk. So that got us scrambling to find a way to get the motor put together. Dan pulled off some magic and found some heads we could use and finished the motor around midnight Friday, and Jimmy and I started putting it in the car at 5:30 Saturday morning. That went relatively smoothly until we got to the new radiator. After some quick fabrication, we got that squared away and got ready to scale the car. Of course the scales wouldn't work, so Jimmy ran to borrow a set from his boss. And when he got back, our scales magically started working again. So after much adieu, we finally made it to the track. We were decent in warmups, but the die was pretty much cast in time trials when I pulled #72 out of the can for my time trial spot. The track was typically daytime-slick and being last in warmups was a pretty big disadvantage. We still managed to time 12th fastest, and that had us starting in the heat 3rd. I made it about a lap and a half before I got together with Buddy Christman and ended up spinning out. I made it back up to 7th, and that had me 3rd in the consi. Which is where I finished. The car was still not good enough, so Jimmy and I made a couple of significant changes for the feature, where we were starting 28th. They dropped the green and we starting on our merry way. I stuck myself on the high side and started passing cars. The car was killer for about the first 5 laps after every start and each caution I made the most of it. By half way I was just about to the top 10 when a restart went bad and I got caught up in it and got stuck into the frontstretch wall. Amazingly, there was no suspension damage, but it did wipe the nose right off the car. So back to the rear I go and start all over again. Just like a Saturday night. Sort of. So I got to work and in about 30 laps I was knocking on the door of the top 10 again. Got pretty close, we finished 11th. Unfortunately, the front end damage caused the motor to overheat badly, so we may have hurt it.