Edition 4, May 1st - 2007

Hankscraft Racing Travels to Golden Sands Speedway

With the weather pushing towards the 80’s it was a great Sunday afternoon to travel north to Golden Sands Speedway located in Plover Wisconsin to watch the Mid Am series take on the famed 40 year speedway. Mark and I found the race team in usual relaxed form chatting about possible set ups. The cars fired up and went out for a brief practice and it reminded me of a quote from one of the most gripping movies I ever saw, Apocalypse Now, where Robert Duvall stood on a beach that his troops were attacking and stated “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Well I can assure you that we race junkies love the smell of “burnt race fuel and tires on a Sunday afternoon.”

 The 26 cars piloted by the men and women drivers in Mid Am lined up for qualifying with the 97 Chevrolet drawing the sixth position. The first five cars laid down mid 13.5 laps and it appeared a trend was being established. Swan’s first lap was good at 13.249 and per usual form he found a better groove and put up a 13.143 on the scoreboard on his second lap. We had to wait through 20 more cars before we knew that we had fast time for the day. We felt good about how the car was handling, and even though James stated that there was loose and tight areas; crew chief Don and James agreed to leave the car alone. As fast qualifier, we got to display the American flag on the track for the National anthem. (see photos)

 The cars were placed in three heat races, and one last chance race with four drivers from last chance advancing to the 40 lap feature. We started last of nine drivers in the third heat and advanced to seventh in our 10 lap heat race. Mark and I watched the late models qualify and run their heat races and we both agreed that this was going to be a hard day to pass if your car was not towards the front, because the cars needed to be on the bottom to pass in the corners but got pinched down on the straights where outside cars had an advantage. Few cars that we watched came from the back to the front in their heats.

 The feature was 40 laps with the Berge Racing Chevrolet starting in tenth position of 20 cars. On the second lap Jeremy Tess spun and caution flew. Swan tried to position the car correctly as he passed cars mostly on the inside. With twelve laps on the board our car was in seventh, and on lap 23 we moved up to 6 th. Lap 34 saw second caution and we maintained 6 th. Lap 32 we moved to 5 th, challenged for 4 th briefly before slipping back into 5 th, which is where we finished. Lyle Nowak did some of the best driving I have seen in a long time and staved off a very hard charging Bill Prietzel to put the 32 car in winners circle. We wish to extend our sincere congratulations to Lyle and his team, for a great finish.

 We had a brief meeting in the hauler after the race and although we wanted the win, we realized we still lead the yearly member points (264 versus 243 over second place Gerke), we have another fast qualifier, and we brought home the car in one piece.

As we left I reminded James that Alan Kulwicki once calculated that in Winston Cup you just needed to keep the car in 5 th position or better in every race and you will win the championship. James replied; “Yeah, but I still want to get this car in winners circle.”

 “We on the team all do, James:”

Racing to the Checkers

Jim