Spotter Bytes
SPOTTER BYTES
By Wayne “Muffy” Wildermuth
Well, this week at Stafford Speedway was a day that was not great, but not too bad eithe
r. With the #94 Sk we had brake issues again. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t work at all. That makes it tough for a driver; not knowing what you will have for brakes as you approach a turn. We didn’t have heats this week, so we didn’t have any extra track time to find it out before the feature. In the feature, we spun out, got into a skirmish, but we finished and came home in 12th place. That’s 3 weeks in a row with a 12th place finish. Things will be better once we figure out the brake issue. Maybe this coming week.
The #32 Late Model was up to its usual tricks. The car is good for a couple of laps and then it goes away and stays away for the rest of the feature. Kevin will figure it out and we will be back at it again. Good driver and good team, we just need to have a long talk with the car.
The Whelen Modified Tour was in town this week and the #13 of Ted Christopher was ready. We had a so-so practice. Car was stable and we were ready for time trials. Ok, well, maybe the car wasn’t quite ready and going out early didn’t help. We qualified poorly and started the race from the 14th spot. We slowly moved forward passing when we could. By lap 105 we had made some good progress, but after pit stops we restarted in 12th. Some cars didn’t pit and were starting ahead of us. So it was 20 to go and after a few laps we spun out in turn 2. Now another restart with 14 to go, we were again starting in 12th for the restart. Oops, another caution in turn 2 and we again spun to avoid a wreck and another car climbed over our left front and drove across our hood. I thought our day was done, but after everything cleared, we were still driving and kept on going. On the next restart, on lap 121, we were 7th. Let do all we can do. The left front got a little banged up so we weren’t sure what we had, but we were going for it. We ended up 6th and with one more lap, we would have gotten 5th. With the events of the day, we will take it and move on to our next race at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park on Wednesday June 10th, don’t miss it.
Saturday was a trip to Seekonk Speedway for the Modified Racing Series 100 lap event. In one of the worst rules in my opinion, we draw for starting spots and tire selection with one pill, we were lucky enough to draw the last pill, so not only are we starting last in the heat, but we are last to pick tires for the race, so we go
t the double whammy. It really should be two separate draws, but it is what it is and we will get the best out of it. Well, in the heat we finished 2nd to last and that’s because the last place car was deemed by MRS officials to be “sandbagging”. Not racing hard enough in an attempt to save tires for the feature race. Well, we started 22nd out of 25 cars for the feature. We slowly, methodically and patiently moved up little by little, taking advantage of opportunities that were presented to us and saving tires along the way. We made our way to 5th spot and were sizing up 4th with less than 10 to go and got spun out. We ended up going to the rear, but the other car did not. He finished in the top 5 and we ended up finishing 12th. The MRS has an A/B rule (basically, if there is contact between two cars and there is a spin/crash, both cars go to the rear) and apparently it was deemed that no one saw the contact so he was allowed to continue. Funny how the cops were at our pit stall thinking we would be angry at the driver, I guess they saw it. Well, we were maybe a little angry, but it was hard racing and things happen. I was more mad at the series officials for not seeing the contact and assessing the penalty. That makes 2 out of 3 races where we were running up front and got spun late in the race. That’s racin, sometimes you’re the windshield and sometimes you’re the bug. This race, we were the bug. We will be back and back running up front again. Pretty soon we will earn the respect we deserve. Next we run at Lee USA Speedway on Friday June 19th.