Spotter Bytes
SPOTTER BYTES
By Wayne “Muffy” Wildermuth
Stafford Speedway was not good to us this week with the #94 SK Modified. Tyler did a great job, but when the field stacks up in front of you because someone missed a shift or had trouble with shifting, you don’t always have control of what happens. That is exactly what happened. We were moving our way forward and taking it easy, but driving harder then we had in the previous 3 weeks now that we are in the handicap scoring system. On a restart, the Justin Bonsignore #21 didn’t get going due to a shifting issue and the field stacked up behind him. It was lock em up time and Tyler did. We were pretty much nose to tail and then we got hit and spun and both ends got heavy damage. The car was towed to the infield and that’s where it sat to wait out the finish of the event. We will get her fixed up and back in shape before next weeks race day comes along.
The #32 Late Model was not wanting to play along this week. We could only manage a 5th place finish. Kevin will get a grip on the handles and the #32 will be back at it this week.
Sunday was a much anticipated day for racing. The Bullring Bash at Lee USA Speedway. Helping ou
t Steve Masse in the #13 was bound to be eventful…..it was. We had a good draw and started pole for our heat race. We won that without much effort. Working things out with Andy Seuss’ spotter to just ride it home to the finish was a sure way to insure we both would be in the show. No need to wreck each other for a heat race win when the real deal was to get into the $5000 to win race. Well the big 100 lap race was lined up and we were starting 2nd to Woody Pitkat’s #42. Woody led for some laps and then we took over the lead and led for quite a few laps. I was telling Steve to save tires and back it down a bit as most of the field was saving tires and rolling around the track with no grip at half speed trying to save their tires for later in the race. At one point, two cars were running slow side-by-side and blocking the entire field and not allowing anyone to pass. There was finally a caution and the field was able to get strung out again after the next restart. We continued to lead until real late in the race. With 3 laps to go, the caution came out. Everyone was sliding around with worn out tires, so after counting the cars on the lead lap, we guessed that around 9 cars were on the lead lap, so the call was made for us to pit and get a new tire to finish the race. We hit pit road with 3 other racers. Turned out to be 16 cars on the lead lap and now we were in the back of the pack with only 3 laps to go. We only managed to get back to 13th before the race ended. All in all it was a good race for us with leading the amount of laps we did and taking the lap money for each lap we lead. We are looking forward to running Monadnock Speedway on Saturday June 13th for the 2nd leg of the Tri-Track Series. I hope everyone comes out and supports that event too.
This will be an easy week for me as I will only be at Stafford Speedway for NASCAR Whelen All-American Series racing and I may cross the pond for Saturday night racing at Riverhead Raceway.