Spotter Bites
It’s called The Greatest Race in the History of Spring, the Spring Sizzler from Stafford Motor Speedway in Stafford Springs, Connecticut. Eight divisions strong, a packed house, and a full pit area, what else could you ask for? Okay, warmer weather. It’s near the month of May and the temperatures are still in the 30s and 40s. Despite Mother Nature, it was a great weekend of racing.
Running through the pits to check-in with the 4 teams I was spotting for was the first order of business. Could they all park near each other next time? Trucks were way out back and it took me forever to get there and back. That was my exercise for the day. The Late Model team was on the way to the spotter’s area in another section of the pits, so I just waited to check in with them until I headed up there. The SK and the tour mods were near each other, so that made it a little easier, but not much.
Practice was not very good for the Eastport Feeds/Axel Anderson, Inc. #75 Whelen Modified Tour car on Saturday. At about 5 laps or so into practice, it tasted the concrete wall at the exit of turn two. The car was running good and then just stepped out and slammed the right front into the wall. There was a lot of damage: Header, tire, rim, suspension parts, body tin, nerf bar and bumper to name a few parts that sustained damage. We only had a little bit of time to try and get it back together before time trials. In the midst of working on the car (yeah, I’m not just a spotter, I can wrench on them too), I had a mini heart attack when I asked someone who was on the track. They told me the SKs were on their way out there now. I thought I was late for the heat races and ran to get my gear and headed to the spotter’s area. I soon realized it was still practice and calmed down and headed back to continue working on the car. I hate it when that happens.
Well, we made repairs in time and were able to run a couple of time trial laps. Not knowing what we had for a car was a bit unnerving for the team and driver Shawn Solomito. We needed to throw away lap one to make sure everything was ok after repairs and if everything was ok, give it our best shot on lap two. With only going at it for one lap, we timed in the show with the 27th fastest time on our second lap, out of 33 cars, which is about what we figured considering what we went through. The SK, Late Model and Truck all qualified into their feature without issue.
The features were a mixed bag for my four teams. The Truck race was Saturday night and Bert Oullette paced himself and ran a really good race. We got to second place with the Cindy Burdick Motorsports /32 Signs #151 and ran there for a while and it was looking like that’s where we were going to finish, then the yellow came out. We didn’t want to see that. We lost second and fell to third where we finished on the podium. We’ll take it. All the other races were on Sunday.
Sunday came and it was a bit warmer. There were three features scheduled and first up was the SK race. The race was more of a survival race for us. The rookie driver Tyler Hines did an excellent job of being patient with the Hines Motorsports #94 and brought home a 15th place finish. Our goal was to stay in the back of the pack all night and bring it home in one piece with a top 15 finish, so we met our goal. The Late Model race was pretty exciting. We had a good car and worked our way to the front after starting 13th. We got to second and were running pretty good. We just lost second place at the line though, by about 1 foot. Another podium with a third place finish for the Rafferty Fine Grading #32 driven by Kevin Gambacorta. Good enough for our first race of the season. The Whelen Modified Tour race was a mix of ups and downs all by itself. We started 27th and the car was really good. We moved forward getting near the top ten before we needed to pit for fuel. Fuel in and all was still good. Then we needed to pit for tires and fell back from near the top ten to the back of the pack. Equipment malfunction is getting the blame for that when a lug nut got jammed in the socket. We went back out and the car was nothing like it was earlier in the race. The car would not turn in the corner and we fell back finishing in 17th spot. A bad tire is believed to be the culprit for the ill handling late in the race.
The next Whelen Modified Tour race is at Waterford Speedbowl May 30th and next Friday starts the weekly racing at Stafford Speedway. I will be headed to Monadnock Speedway on Saturday for the Modified Racing Series event and then heading directly to Chemung Speedrome for the Race of Champions event on Sunday. Keep digging race fans.
Sources: Wayne “Muffy” Wildermuth/YankeeRacer.com