Spotter Bytes
SPOTTER BYTES
By Wayne “Muffy” Wildermuth
Another pretty slow weekend this week with only three days of racing and all of them being at my local tracks, so travel was pretty short this week too. The first day was at the Stafford Speedway for a regular weekly Friday night show and the next two were at the New London-Waterford Speedbowl for a weekly Saturday night show and then Sunday was back to the bowl for the much anticipated 4th leg of the Tri-Track Series. Although it was a slow weekend, it was busy and a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. So get ready for a longer than usual article.
In the days leading up to Friday there were spotter issues. Cam McDermott (who I have been spotting for for a few years) was planning to run his SK at Stafford on Friday and asked me if I knew of a good spotter that could spot for him. I have become some sort of spotter agent lately as everyone calls me when they need a spotter. I guess they think I have the inside scoop on what good spotters are available. I try to help everyone out with good spotters because I look at it this way, if I can get a good spotter to help them, it is better for the driver I am working with because I know that spotter will make it easier on me when we get to racing side by side. That’s my logic anyway. So as it ended up, I had trouble finding someone available. Fridays are hard, most people work and its hard to get to the track. I got to thinking, so I checked with Tyler Hines (the #94 SK driver I spot for weekly) and asked him if Cam’s girlfriend Lauren could spot for him and then I would spot for Cam. Tyler didn’t mind the switch-up (why would he, his best finish this season was when I was away and Lauren filled in for me). So it was settled, we both had a spotter. Why didn’t Lauren spot for Cam you ask? Ok you didn’t, but I know you’re wondering. It is usually not a good idea to have someone with an emotional tie spot it usually doesn’t work out well.
Well things didn’t turn out too well for either one of us. It felt kind of weird hanging around the #5RI SK with Cam and not hanging around the #94 trailer with Tyler and eating the cookies, that’s another story for another time. Tyler missed practice because of hockey, work, school or ballet, I’m not quite sure, but he was unable to test the car, so we (Lauren was not there yet) had Ronnie Williams shake it down for him in practice. He said it was ok, but had a brake issue in the left front, so they worked on the brakes and figured it was all set. In the heat race the brakes once again failed and he made contact with the #66 and sent him into the wall (they made it back for the feature though). Tyler elected to start behind the handicapped cars in the feature and he ended up finishing 12th.
In our heat race with Cam, we took it easy. We had not run the car there all season so we were out of the handicapping system so we would start near the back no matter where we finished in the heat. So we started near the back of the field in the feature and within a few laps (5 I think) the car just shut off and would not refire. So we pulled it down pit road and there it sat for the rest of the feature. We didn’t find out why it shut off either. Time for some investigative work at the shop.
The #32 Late Model race was pretty much the same as it has been all season long. We start the feature on the outside row, then fall back on the green and then race our way back to the front. This time though, we fell back a long ways, like about 7 spots. We finally got to race in the groove and that allowed us to be able to race back up to the 4th spot before the checkered flags fell. We are 2nd overall for points, 48 points behind the leader. There is only one more weekly series race left at Stafford before the end of the season.
Saturday was twin 30 lap features for the SKs at the speedbowl and I was going to be spotting for Zach Sylvester in the #51CT for the 2nd week in a row. We finished 5th last week for his first time being there this season. This was another situation where we didn’t run the track enough this season to be in the handicapping system so we knew we would be starting towards the rear in the first feature. We ran the first feature from the 22nd starting spot out of 27 cars. We raced our way forward to I think, a 10th place finish. My memory is shot and the website is not updated yet so I can’t verify it. We thought they were inverting the top 12 finishers from the first race, but that was not the case for us, we started 20th in the second feature and before we could really get going we had to pull off the track. We had an oil leak and didn’t finish the race. I hope we can run again next week.
When I got to the track, I was asked by Glenn Griswold to spot for him in the #60 SK Light. I had spotted for him before and we must have done okay if he was asking me to do it again, so I figured why not. Well, we won our heat race and he got to have his picture taken with the checkered flag, so that was cool. We ran a pretty steady race in the feature and wound up finishing 4th so that wasn’t too bad. I always have fun spotting for Glenn. Maybe he will let me do it again next week if he runs again and see if we can get the checkered flag at the end of the feature too.
Sunday we knew we had a decent car. The #13 El Gee Restaurant Equipment sponsored modified and driver Steve Masse were ready to go. We ran our heat race and finished 2nd in it (it didn’t pay to win it). Then on the front stretch before the crowd, they had the top 10 starters redraw for their starting positions. Steve drew 4, so we moved up 2 spots from our original starting spot of 6th. After about 30 laps, the car was falling off a bit and not driving to Steve’s liking, so we hit pit road for an adjustment and a new tire. We went from the front of the field to the back of the field. With only 30 laps of the 100 lap race completed and now we had to make the tires last for the remaining 70 laps. We originally were not going to pit that early, but the ill handling car forced Steve to make the call for the adjustments. So with 70 to go we had to be aggressive to go from the back of the field to get back to the front of the field, but at the same time be cautious enough not to wreck the car in the process.
We ran hard and passed a bunch of cars and we soon found ourselves in 2nd place behind Ted Christopher. We were working him over pretty good and he was kind enough to leave the bottom open on the exits of the corners. Just enough for us to stick our nose in there and then burn our tires up trying to stay down there and make the pass; no thanks, to the top we went and passed him coming off turn 4 when he got loose and spun out. I’m just glad we didn’t get run up the track when we got to his outside. We had about a 10 car length lead and only a handful of laps to go when the yellow came out. Not what we wanted to see. The #50 of Ron Silk was behind us and he had fresher tires then we did. On the restart we tried to keep the same pace through the box (area where the start is to happen based on the leader firing first) and start when we wanted to start to get the best possible start we could, but getting that done is hard when everyone behind you wants to go. When you’re pushed, you cannot control the start. Ronnie had a great restart and had better tires which allowed him to get position on us to be able to force us to stay low and pinch the car down enough to scrub off speed. He took the lead from us and never looked back. Yeah, we finished 2nd, but it still hurts when the win gets taken away from you like that, that late in the race. I guess we will try again October 25th when the Tri-Track Series returns to the New London-Waterford Speedbowl for the 5th and final race of the series.