Well, it was a great day for racing. Some blue skies and pleasant temperatures in high 60s! I didnt get to the track until around 3:30p so I was only going to make 1 practice session. It went well. The car was a little loose so we made a change for our qualifying attempt. 16 cars qualified and I ended up 5th fast with a 15.6. The car was still loose so we again made an adjustment in preparation for the heat race. I finished 4th in the heat and again the car was still loose and now the motor was acting a little odd.
For the main event we had 14 cars lined up ready for action. We got off to a fast start and climbed to 3rd position by lap 5 and then in the middle of turn 1 & 2 the #88 got into my left rear and spun me in front of the entire pack of cars! Luckily, no one made contact with me and we were able to regroup and get ready for the restart. I was placed in last place because I was involved in the wreck but the #88 got to move up to 3rd place! Interesting call there...Anyway, after the restart we were moving through traffic on the outside and was nearly involved in a pileup in turn 3! We were able to escape that accident without a scratch as well! Whew! There were many yellow flags and even a red flag for Jim Brock's tranny explosion and subsequent fire. He was unhurt and the fire was extinguished quickly on its own. The track was a mess however and it took quite awhile to clean it all up. On the restart I decided to take the high lane to 2nd place. On the green, I wasnt able to keep good grip on the outside with the fresh kitty-litter and fell to 4th place which is where I finished. My car had an exhaust leak somewhere and I had some huge fireballs coming out of the tailpipe and some pretty loud backfires too! During our preliminary inspection Wednesday night, we found that the left side header had a large gap in it. It has already been pulled off and welded. I would assume we were down some HP because of this leak and look forward to full power next race!
I have some great in-car camera videos posted on youtube including this race! My youtube website http://www.youtube.com/user/wadekoe
Thanks again to Diet Pepsi, Kamper Korner RV Center, Mahalo Heating & Air, Ferrellgas & Oregon State Fair. Your support is much appreciated. The next race is May 15th...see you all then!
