Spotter Bytes
SPOTTER BYTES
By Wayne “Muffy” Wildermuth
So this was the week everyone on the Whelen Modified Tours were waiting for, its Bristol Baby! So it was time to pack the car for a long trip. It would be for 3 days, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with the race being on Wednesday. The drive was expected to take about 11-12 hours if all went well. We left in the wee hours of the morning and headed to Bristol, Virginia to our hotel. Yes, I meant to say Bristol, Virginia, it was only about 20 minutes from the track in Bristol, Tennessee. So we were on the road and we were making good time, Check up! Check up! We were at a standstill. When I say standstill, I mean standstill. We even got out of the vehicle on the highway and stretched our legs for a while. We were in Pulaski, Virginia and only a mile before an exit, but we were stuck. Nothing was moving. It was about 2 hours of waiting before we finally got underway again. A vehicle accident is what I have heard was the reason for the delay, but by the time we were moving again it had all been cleaned up, no sign of an accident. The trip ended up taking about 14 hours. I’m flying from now on, period!
We finally made it to the hotel. We got some dinner and then some sleep. Boy did that alarm go off too soon. It was an early start to the day for us as we headed over to the track. No food and no coffee before I got to the track and no food or drink once I got there either. So still without eating or drinking, I had to head up to the spotting area now for practice and that was no easy feat, but a trip I would make no less then 4 times that day. It starts from nearly the lowest area, the infield and ends at nearly the highest point in turn 1. It entails walking through the infield to turn 3-4 tunnel that goes down under the track and then comes back up and comes out under the grandstands in the turns. Then you walk uphill (steep grade) for about 100’ to where you get on an elevator that takes you to the floor where you get off and walk down a long hallway to the exit door to the roof where we spot from. This would be a long day as the weather was not going to cooperate with us at all. We dodged raindrops and got practice in. I was not on the roof for the #13 of Ted Christopher as he had taken a ride in another car; I was on the roof for car #19. 
This is one of the Hillbilly South cars from the David Hill race team. The driver was Joe Ryan Osborne whom I have spotted for several times in the past. I was really looking forward to seeing him and his family and spotting for him again, it had been a while.
Well we got practice in and later got qualifying in too. We had a poor qualifying attempt as the car was not quite right. So we ended up starting 23rd out of 36 cars. Not the best, but we made the show on time and didn’t need to use a provisional, so that was good. In the race, the car was so loose that Joe Ryan couldn’t get a good lap in. We finally had the mandatory halfway break for pit stops. Adjustments were made to help the car, but before we could really test the adjustments, NASCAR told us the next lap would be the checkered flag lap, that was lap 103. All of us spotters turned and looked at each other like, did I hear that right? We did. They had shortened the race abruptly do to lightning and heavy rain in the area. We ended up finishing 19th overall. It was not the race we wanted, and it rained really hard, and it was rain delayed, and the trip down there was super long and tiring, and it was a shortened race, but I can’t wait for next year. The next WMT race will be at the Riverhead Raceway on Long Island on 8/29. The #13 team I am usually with on the Tour will be there with substitute driver James Civali.
Friday night racing at Stafford was cancelled this week, so that leaves Saturday for the Modified Racing Series at the Monadnock Speedway with the #19 David Schneider car. This event was a special event as it was the Swanzey Oil 5th Annual Victor Johnson night at the races event. Lots of extra money and bonuses were on the line as a tribute to the memory of late race car driver Victor Johnson.
We were not bad in practice and it was just a logging laps kind of practice again. The heat race was a different story as we had to start on the outside of row #2, not where we wanted to be. We were blocked by a slower car in front of us and slowly made our way in the wrong direction. After a few laps we found ourselves in what would be our finishing position, 2nd to last, last place was the car that slowed us down from the beginning. The poor finishing position in the heat race gave us a 23rd starting spot in the 100 lap feature. Starting in the back at a short track makes it tough; you have to stay on the lead lap by running hard, but running easy enough to not burn up your tires in the process. Passing cars on this track is not easy. We ran as hard as we could and still were not able to stop the leader from passing us and put us a lap down, but wait! Yellow flag, the caution was out and we were back on the lead lap because a full lap had not been completed since we were passed by the leader. What a good break. That put us the last car on the lead lap. We were able to remain there for the rest of the race and came home in the 7th position. We even earned the Hard Charger award of $250 for making up 15 positions in the event. Thanks to Lisa Patnode for all her hard work in getting all the bonus money that was handed out at this event. The next MRS event will be at Oxford Plains Speedway on 8/29, but I will miss it because of the Riverhead Tour race.