Spotter Bites
It’s here! The 2015 racing season has begun. The winter season was long and I’m not so sure it’s really done with us either, but the sun’s shining and there’s no more snow left on the track. Time to trade in snow plows and shovels for radios and steering wheels, it’s race season!
Over the offseason I was busy working to find spotting deals with teams for the upcoming 2015 season and I was pretty happy with what I had lined up, but then some uncontrollable things changed one race team’s plans and it meant I needed to scramble to find another ‘gig’ for the Whelen Modified Tour. As luck, no, fate would have it, Shawn Solomito was looking for a spotter and when he asked me, I jumped at the chance. After all, I couldn’t turn down the guy who I started my spotting career with, now could I?
At the track for three days now and it’s time to run around to all the teams (5) that I was spotting for this weekend to make sure all the radios were working properly. I put some mileage on my shoes doing so, Thompson is a huge place and the pit area is the size of a small city. Everything was fine with who I was able to check with. The one I could not check ended up having a bad radio in the car for practice and he couldn’t hear me. Once that radio was changed, all was right in my world of spotting.
Friday was a day of inspections and only a short practice session, but Mother Nature had other ideas and force practice to be cancelled. Saturday was practice and race day for a few divisions. I was spotting for 2 of the divisions racing. One was the New England Truck Series and the other was the Sunoco Lite Modifieds. We finished fourth in the truck series with the #151 with driver Bert Ouellette. That’s a little better than the last time we worked together when for some reason Bert thought it would be cute to drive off into turn 1 on his roof. We won the Sunoco Lite Modified race with the #64 with driver Tyler Hines. Not a bad start for the first time working together with Tyler.
Sunday was like a bad dream. I went from penthouse on Saturday to the outhouse on Sunday. I spotted 3 divisions Sunday and had 3 DNFs (Did Not Finish) to show for it. In the Late Model race with Art Moran Jr. in the #96, we go hit hard when another driver drove in too deep and slammed us up into the wall. The car suffered too much damage to continue. The Sunoco Modified race with Cam McDermott in the #5RI, we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We made a pit stop to do work to cool the car down as it was running a little hot and when we restarted we were near the rear of the field when 2 drivers racing hard got out of shape, one of them hit us and sent us straight on into the front stretch wall. That was the end of that race. And in the Whelen Modified Tour race with Shawn Solomito in the #75, we suffered a mechanical failure in the engine area that shortened our day. Can we get a do-over of Sunday, please?
Really was nice to get back to the track and see my racing family. It is amazing how many friends you have in this sport, that is until its race time and then again after the race is over. You have no friends during the race, it’s every team for themselves.
So now I have a couple of weeks off before heading to the Spring Sizzler at the Stafford Motor Speedway, where I will be yapping in the ear of SK driver Tyler Hines # 94, Whelen Modified Tour driver Shawn Solomito #75, Late Model driver Kevin Gambacorda #32 and New England Truck Series driver Bert Ouellette #151. I hope to see you there.
Sources: Wayne “Muffy” Wildermuth