Spotter Bytes
SPOTTER BYTES
By Wayne “Muffy” Wildermuth
The week started on Wednesday for the 3rd event of the 2015 season at the beautiful Thompson Speedway
Motorsports Park facility. Mother Nature washed out most of practice so that meant we would need to use the heat race as a practice as well to dial in the car for the feature. We started on the pole in the heat race with the Cam McDermott’s, Maybury Material Handling #5 Sunoco modified and finished in the 2nd spot. In the feature we also started on the pole and led a few laps before being passed by the #38 driven by Nick Ladyga. Several restarts had the #38 running us up and at one point we had to back out of the throttle or we would have been put in the wall. I guess he figured it was payback time, but he took it a little too far. The previous race we passed him and nerfed him a little in the process. He was paying us back now. He had the faster car and should have just raced on to the win, we had nothing for him, but he was so caught up in running us up and playing games on the restarts, that it forced track officials to send him to the rear of the field for his efforts.This handed us the lead again and we never looked back, well, except to watch a hard charging Woody Pitkat in the #6 who was coming on strong. He raced us hard and clean and we were able to bring it home to win the event. This was our first Sunoco modified feature win. We will be back on July 29th for the Sunoco modified 20/20 Sprint event.
The #96 Art Moran late model was better then it had been in the previous races here at Thompson, but was still not as good as it could be. We had a 3 segment race for the late models, two segments of 20 laps and then a 10 lap sprint. We finished 18th in each of the first 2 segments and then 15th in the 10 lap sprint for an overall finishing position of 18th. We had some issues, but I feel confident that once through the learning curve, things will turn around. With a little more work, it will be good enough to hang with the big boys up front.
Friday had me taking a trip to the Claremont Speedway in Claremont New Hampshire for the 100 lap Modified Racing Series event. This was the first time the MRS had been to the track in about 4 years. Many drivers, including my own driver had never seen the track before. Knowing the track and how you need to race it, I felt a need to educate my driver David Schneider, so I took him out and we walked the track while I was explaining lift, brake and throttle points. I showed him the line on entry, center and exit. Then we put tires on the car and all David did was run laps to learn the track. We didn’t make any adjustments. We just rolled off the track when the group was done and went around and got back in line to go out and do it again. It paid off as the #19 was one of the fastest cars out there towards the end of the race. We were biding our time going from like 20th to 5th, 6th or 7th (can’t remember) with plenty of car, tires and driver left. Unfortunately it was poor officiating that took us out of the event by calling us an accident car when we only stopped to avoid a crash (twice). The rule is that of you stop
to avoid the wreck and don’t make contact, you get the spot back that you were running before the accident occurred. That error put us in the back of the field and then we ended up getting caught up in someone else’s mess. We didn’t finish the race due to the damage we suffered and ended up in the 15th position. Judging by the standings at the finish, we should have been 2nd or 3rd at the finish if not for the officiating error. Next we head to Devil’s Bowl in Fair Haven, Vermont with the MRS on July 24th.
Saturday was another road trip to the Monadnock Speedway for some weekly racing. Scott Norman’s #11 was poised for another night at the tough little racetrack. Scott started on the pole in the heat race and immediately fell to the rear of the field. The car looked real good in practice, but in the heat race, it was possessed. The car had a mind of its own. Later, it was found that there was a bad shock that caused the car to act that way. After that was fixed, it was time for the feature. We started on the front row and got spun on the first lap coming off turn 4. The next restart, we were in the back when the track got blocked on the next visit to turn 4. The wreck was right in front of us and we had nowhere to go. We tapped one of the cars hard enough to break a strut bar in the left front. That pretty much ended our night. Oh and by the way, there were still no laps complete. Too bad, I think the car was as good as I have seen it and I was looking forward to a good finish. I will be back to the tough little track on July 25th for the Whelen Modified Tour event where I will be spotting for Scott again to see if we can get that good finish, or at least maybe race at least a lap.