SPOTTER BYTES
SPOTTER BYTES
By Wayne “Muffy” Wildermuth
Lots of road time for the racing this week. I headed to New Hampshire Motor Speedway for Friday and Saturday racing with the Whelen Modified Tour and then to northern New York (near Buffalo) to Lancaster National Speedway on Sunday for the Race of Champions 125 lap event. Friday we got the #13 James Civali car out and get her all ready to practice. We run a few laps and all is going well. We put our mock run (practice qualifying) tires on and head out to see what we really have. We have nothing! The car developed a motor problem which later actually turned out to be the fuel pump that let go. With parts in the oil pan from the fuel pump, it was determined that the risk was not worth it, why blow a motor on the track and risk wrecking our car and possibly other cars as well. So without a backup motor or backup car, we decided to load it up and not run it. I saw Bob (Bob Katon, the car owner) a little while later and he told me that he was working on something; by that I thought maybe he w
as borrowing a motor from someone, little did I know, he was
borrowing a whole car. Chris Our (the team owner for the team that now has our original driver, TC) was loaning us his backup car. Kind of ironic don’t ya think? Well, then we set to working on the black #22 to change it over to the #13 (James did a lot of the vinyl work) and get it ready for qualifying as practice was already complete. So James’ only laps would be the 2 for qualifying. He would need to diagnose what it needs in those two laps. She was a little tight, so adjustments were made and we were hoping for the best. We wanted to race, but didn’t want to damage the car doing so, so we needed to race hard, but smart.
The 100 lap race was a busy one for sure. We start
ed 19th out of 34 cars based off our qualifying effort (remember James had no laps in the car before that) and that meant we would be right in the middle of the pack. What I call the hornet’s nest. We had to get out of there and fast. The car had other plans and we hung around in that area for the first half of the race. We had made a couple of pit stops to make adjustments, some made it better and some didn’t change it at all. At halfway the caution came out for a planned break in the race for fueling and tires and whatever else teams needed to do. We fueled the car and changed tires and made our adjustments like everyone else and then headed out for the 2nd half of the race.
I don’t know what they did in the pits but whatever they did, woke the car up and we were marching to the front. We got up to 5th (even ahead of the #22 Our primary car) with just under 10 to go and the caution that had come out closed the field right up tight. They threw the green and we were back racing and with a shot at the win. We were held up a bit by the #38 (normally #88, but running a Jerry Cook tribute scheme) Woody Pikat on the bottom groove. We were working out a way by him when we got together with the earlier passed #51 Justin Bonsignore when he made a move to the bottom of the track in turn three. That sent us spinning to the top of the track and then we got hit by another car. The right front wheel was broken away and I knew our day was done. What a tremendous drive by James in that borrowed car, with very little practice and with someone else’s seat. I bet he was not as comfortable as he would have liked to be. We finished the night in 27th spot, but the sponsor (Canto Paving) of that Our Motorsports car was super happy about how we drove it. He made a point to come over and tell us about it after the race was over. We will be back at it with the Whelen Modified Tour on October 3rd and 4th at the Stafford Motor Speedway for the NAPA Auto Parts Fall Final 150 lap event.
After a long drive to Lancaster New York and a few hours of sleep it was time to head to the track. I hated hearing the alarm clock, but I liked reading my text messages that morning. One was from Mike Leaty asking me to spot for him. See, I was going to the race originally to spot for Jimmy Zacharias who eventually backed out of running that race, so now I was going as a spectator or maybe as an extra pair of hands for Matt Hirschman. Either way, I would rather spot for someone, so I was happy to say “Sure!!” I got to the track and finally found the right car. He said the #1 Jeff DeMinck car, but there were two of them and I went to the wrong one first. I saw another name on the car so I looked around and finally
found the right car. I first had to get one of their radios and then program mine to work with theirs. I was looking for my Staples “That was easy!” button. So in practice, the LFR car was decent. I’m not sure if we won practice or not, but we were right up there in the running for the fastest time, so I knew we had a hotrod. In the heat race, we finished 2nd. The driver wanted to win that, but with a little encouragement from me, he decided to save his tires for later since heats did not pay and there was a redraw for starting positions anyway. We ended up starting 6th in the 125 lap race. This is not really the type of race you wantto be starting up front. This is a tire management race and when you’re up front, you need to run harder then you really want to. Well, as the race went on, I was getting more and more concerned about tire wear and was telling Mike to save those tires. He said he was not pushing it at all and felt like he was saving tires fairly well. We lead many laps and were fighting to save tires at the same time even to the point that we let many competitors go by as we fell deeper and deeper through the field. At one point we got hit pretty hard in the rear and had to burn up tire to try and save the car from spinning out. That may have hurt us more than anything. All those heat cycles (tires getting hot and then cooling down and then getting hot again) didn’t help either. We had a very loose racecar with the laps winding down and for the last 15 laps or so Mike was just hanging on. We didn’t have any more tire left on the car and had to finish the race the best we could. We went from the penthouse to the outhouse in the remaining laps and soldiered home to a 12th place finish as the car really went away on us at the end. This was only the 3rd race for this team on that new LFR chasis. They are making gains on it and will get it sorted out and be contending for wins soon. Thanks to Mike and Jan Leaty, Jeff DeMinck and all the gang for allowing me to be apart of the fun. It was good to see some old teams from up in that area too. Teams that I don’t get to see too often like the Hirschman’s, Hanbury’s, Lewis. Jankowiak’s and a few others. Not sure when I will be back that far north again, but I know I will be looking forward to it.