SPOTTER BYTES
SPOTTER BYTES
By Wayne “Muffy” Wildermuth
With hurricane Joaquin lingering off the east coast, it was hard to tell if we would be racing at Stafford Motor Speedway for the weekend or not. The track kept telling everyone the race was on, so we had to go to the track just in case. Well, it was wet and rainy all morning on Saturday and boy was it cold, but the Fall Final show went on and it all got completed and mostly on schedule.
Practice and heats were on Saturday and the races were held on Sunday. After the morning fan fest where the fans were allowed on the track to mingle with all the drivers, teams and cars that were displayed on the track, it was time for the 3 main events. The SK feature was first, followed by the Late Models and then the Whelen Modified Tour event.
In the SK feature, things didn’t go very well. We were towards the back of the field with the #94 when cars started darting everywhere down the front stretch. We ended up spinning the car sideways to avoid crashing and were in pretty good shape until another car came crashing in seemingly without slowing down until the second just before contacting us. We were hit so hard that the header was crushed and out competitive day was over. We continued to run the rest of the feature, but only at a speed slow enough to not damage the motor. We limped home to a 20th place finish out of 27 cars.
This season has been a tough one for the Tyler Hines #94 team. It was not the rookie season everyone was hoping for. There were crashes we were in that were not of our doing, there were crashes we were in that was of our doing and we crashed other cars unintentionally. I had a great time working with the Hines family team. They are one of the nicest families in racing. Next season can only be better for the #94 team.
Next up was the Late Model feature; care to guess where we started? If you have been following along all season, you would probably guess and be correct that we started 4th. Not sure how we can finish in different positions in the heat races, but start 4th nearly every week in the feature. As typical of the 4th place start, we fell back a few spots at the beginning before making a climb back toward the front of the field. We at one point tried to squeeze into a whole in the bottom groove to try and stop the backwards fall, but ended up getting spun into the infield. The spotter should not have tried to clear the driver into that spot, but we needed to do something because we needed to finish 2 spots ahead of the #51 in order to finish 2nd overall in points. As it turned out, the car was off just a bit and we may not have had a shot at it anyway. We ended up finishing 6th out of 20 cars. The #51 finished 4th and 2nd overall, leaving us in 3rd overall for the season. I had a great time with the #32 Kevin Gambacorta team all season and finishing 3rd overall is actually a great year for one of the lower budgeted teams. They do the best they can with what they have.
Now came the Whelen Modified Tour NAPA Fall Final 150 with the Cape Cod Aggregates, Seekonk Grand Prix #13 team and driver James Civali. We qualified 12th on Saturday during time trials, so that’s where we were starting the race from for this event. We raced in the top 12 for most of the race and on lap 94 there was a caution that allowed everyone to pit. We pitted 15 laps earlier for a tire change and this time we were only doing an adjustment to dial in the car. We ended up being the first off pit road putting us 3rd on the restart, but everyone else had fresher tires then we did. On the lap 101 restart, we went into turn 1 a little higher then normal and the #22 (Ted Christopher) and #16 (Timmy Solomito) had room to slide underneath us that made it a 3 wide race through and out of turn two. Well it forced us a bit higher then we wanted to be and we ended up getting squeezed into the back stretch wall. We slowed dramatically as a result and this caused a major jam up and cars went spinning everywhere. James was not happy with the move and on the front stretch he let the #16 know he was not happy. That shortened up our front bumper a bit.
Photo Credit: Scott Martin
On lap 122 while racing hard with the #14 (Max Zachem) and #58 (Eric Goodale), the #14 seemed to slow a bit out of turn 2 and the #58 had to slow also. James tried to slow also, but was unable to in time and ended up sliding into the infield to avoid wrecking the #58. James kept it going and was almost in jeopardy of going a lap down, but the yellow came out for another incident and it allowed us to catch back up to the field. With 15 laps to go, we were running in the 10th spot for the restart. The #16 had a bad restart and that allowed the #88 (Woody Pitkat) to get along side him and down the backstretch they got together causing another big accident in front of us going into turn 3. I don’t know how, but we made it through the wreck, but after slowing we came out near the end of the field by the time we hit the start finish line. After the cleanup and readjusting the lineup, we ended up 10th again on the next restart.
Photo Credit: Scott Martin
Now with only 9 laps to go, we were in a good spot and ready to run to the finish. On lap 142 the #99 (Jamie Tomaino) made contact with us on the backstretch and knocked the tire off the rim. We almost hit the wall going into turn 3 and then 4, but were able to avoid that and then James drove it to pit road for a tire change. The team changed the tire and got him back out without losing a lap. We started 14th on the final restart with only 4 laps to go. We finished the race in 13th spot, but NASCAR scoring scored us as 16th because it did not electronically pick up the car when it crossed the start finish line on pit road when we were fixing the flat tire and that made it appear that we were a lap down. I seriously doubt they will fix the scoring error. Our next and final race of the season will be on October 18th at the Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park for the Sunoco World Series of Speedway Racing.