Spotter Bytes
SPOTTER BYTES
By Wayne “Muffy” Wildermuth
The last Friday night regular season race at Stafford Speedway was upon us. We had made some changes to the braking sytem in the #94 SK for Tyler Hines and were hoping it would finally fix the issue of inconsistent braking that has plagued us most of the season. The problem was; where was Tyler? School had him missing practice again this week, so we once again called on Ronnie Williams to shake the car down in practice. Everything went well, with no complaints about the brakes this time. I was feeling confident that the brakes were fixed.
After qualifying was over, it was feature time and we were starting on the outside of the front row, on the outside of Mike Christopher Jr. and if you remember a few weeks ago, we had a bad start and made contact with Mike and sent him hard into the wall in turn one. Could it be payback time? Would it be payback time? I was nervous, but I also knew Mike and the Christopher racing family were and are not that kind of racers. They understand that things are going to happen and they realize that accidents are accidents and they are not always intentional. Such was the case with us. So Mike raced us with class and just went about his business racing hard. We took the lead when Mike got a tad loose in turn one. We held the lead for a little while and then the car started to fall off and get too loose to hang up front and fight with the big boys. We settled in and ended up in the 7th finishing position. For us, it was a good night as we were able to actually race and not have brake issues. Our next race will be the Fall Final on October 4th.
The #32 Late Model was like a broken record as we ran our usual race. I could sum it up in one line I think. We again started 4th, then fell back about seven spots and then worked our way forward again to finish 7th. The winner was disqualified in post race tech inspection so it gave us a 6th place finish. This is pretty much the way all season has gone for us. This not so good finish caused us to fall to 3rd in overall points for the season.
Matching sweatband.
Photo courtesy Chris Forster
Every time I go to the racetrack, I go not knowing what the outcome will be. I go expecting to do the best I can and I always hope that that is good enough. Often I go home tired and on the way home I relive the day’s event and critique what I did and try to see where I could improve. Well, Saturday at the New London-Waterford Speedbowl, I didn’t have a chance. We took the Zack Sylvester driven #51ct out for practice and after about 5 laps our day was done. The motor made some tapping sounds that worried Zack so he shut it down. We tore the motor apart trying to identify the issue and thinking we could fix it and still race, but it was not possible to determine the source of the noise. We loaded up the car and watched the rest of the racing that night. One more Saturday night of racing left on September 26th for Military & Championship Night.
Sunday I took a ride to a great little track up north in Maine. It’s a track I call the “Sandbox” because it has dirt pits with no asphalt and the track looks like it was built on sand banks. When you come off the track, your off-roading it to your pit stall. It’s the track they named Beach Ridge Motor Speedway in Scarborough, Maine. 
I was going up there to watch 400 laps of fender car racing. The Pro All Star Series was in town and running a 300 lap super Late Model event. Also on hand was the Northeast Mini Stock Tour and on the way to the track I learned that I was not going to be watching that event, well as a spectator anyway. I would be spotting for the Pete Zaikarite Jr. driven #07. We broke a hub in our heat race and did not finish the heat. That meant we would be starting way out back in the feature. We really had no idea what the car would do and planned on making an adjustment if needed later in the 50 lap race. Ha, not going to happen. We started 18th and the race went from green to checkered. We passed a bunch of cars during the 50 lap race, some already lapped and some for position. By the time it was all said and done, we found ourselves in 8th position. Not too bad considering. Our next race will be at the World Series of Auto Racing at the Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park on October 17th.