Spotter Bytes
SPOTTER BITES
By Wayne “Muffy” Wildermuth
This week started off at the Stafford Motor Speedway with the Modified Racing series’ (MRS) 80 lap event along with the NASCAR Weekly All American Racing Series events that were also on the card for the night. It was scheduled to be a slow weekend with just two days of racing, but that changed a little when Mother Nature decided to add her 2 cents to the mix forcing changes to the schedule at the Riverhead Raceway on Saturday.
After taking two weeks off, I was back on the radio for the #94 SK of Tyler Hines and I was hoping for a good run. The night ended up being about what could be expected when you race on older tires. The car seemed to be skating around a bit and just didn’t feel like it was “into” the track, it just kind of felt like it was “on top” of the track. It reminded me of the Paul Simon song Slip Sliding Away. After spinning and narrowly avoiding a major crash, we soldiered home to an 11th place finish. The car should be better this week with different tires.
Coming back from the 
two weeks off also had me feeling good to be back on the radio for the #32 Late Model for Kevin Gambacorta. I was not sure what car I was watching during practice as the #32 looked completely different on the track. The attitude of the car was better then it had been so far this season. I guess the team found some stuff that woke the car up. We started on the front row for the race and ran in the top three all race long and at the end, we wound up on the podium with a 3rd place finish.
The David Schneider MRS #19 was not as good as the first time at Stafford for the series this season. The night was a rough one. We were running ok and just logging laps when we spun around entering turn 3 and got collected by another car. We were able to continue, but the next restart as the car was entering turn 1, the car just snapped around sideways and spun out, slamming squarely into the wall with the driver’s side. David was ok, but the car suffered enough damage that it will more than likely miss the next MRS race at Manadnock Speedway.
Saturday came and it was time once again for me to cross the pond of Long Island Sound to get to the Riverhead Raceway for the Whelen Modified Tour, Hoosier Tire East 200 lap event. The #13 Ted “TC” Christopher team was ready to go and was expecting good things as they were contenders for the win at this track the last time the tour was there. This one day event turned into a two day event when Mother Nature decided she wanted to rain on our parade. The track stayed dry for most of the morning though and when it came time for time trials, a heavy mist came and eventually came down heavy enough that the rest of the scheduled racing was postponed until the following day. We did get practice and qualifying in so it was not a total day lost. The 28 car field was set for the 200 lap event with 7 cars failing to qualify. The 3 hour trip home Saturday only meant I would be making another trip on the ferry across the sound in the morning. I got to the track about an hour before the race was scheduled to start and I was questioning then if we would even get it in on that day. Well, we did. The race started with us in the 22nd spot. We steadily moved forward during the green flag periods, missing wrecks and raindrops along the way. We had to stop for rain a couple of times during the event to dry the track, but everyone made it happen. We were riding in 9th looking pretty good for the finish, but the last 25 or so laps the car had other plans and we lost some grip and fell back a couple of spots. We ended up finishing in the 11th spot, but all-in-all a good day. When you can drive your car into the pits at the end of the race with all 4 wheels pointed in the right direction at Riverhead, it’s not that bad of a night. We will be heading to the New Hampshire Motor Speedway for our next WMT event on July 18th.