Edition 13, Oct 1st- 2007

A good day at Rockford

Watching the weather leading up to the next to last race of the Mid Am season, the chance of rain on Sunday was listed at 45%. I remember thinking and then verbalizing to Adam, good I hope it rains and we only have one more race to worry about. But Adam reminded me that we were going to win or lose on the track, and that we wanted to be at Rockford as this is where we had raced well. I reminded him to look at our race site to view the pictures of last year’s fall race where we tore all the right side sheet metal off the car. I like the Rockford track as a spectator, but also respect it as one who has interest in a race team.

We arrived too late to see the actual qualifying, but as many other times this season, James found the fast groove and won the pole and the “faster than a bullet” award. Swan clocked in at 14.196; followed by #10 at 14.229; 99 at 14.359; 32 at 14.365; and 77 at 14.373. Prietzel’s number 5 car posted a ninth fast time at 14.447. As usual our reward for posting fast time would be a start somewhere in the middle of the feature. I was focused on watching the #77 Senercha car as he always seemed to do well at this track and I knew he usually knew the fastest groove.

As we had a relatively small field, there were no normal heat races; rather there was a last chance race for six cars for positioning in the 75 lap feature. Lap two of this race saw the #34 and #12 Tews car spin. After cleanup, and before lap three was posted, Tews and the #93 Obermeyer cars found each other with #93 losing body parts and showing front suspension damage. The race ended with Kulka, Null, and Damrow finishing in the first three positions.

The 75 lap feature started with our car in the eleventh position in the sixth row. The top two cars dashed off and Swan tried to find a line. On lap three we moved to the outside to try and follow our friends in the #10 and #32 cars. Lap 16 was caution for debris and we started on the inside, but were having difficulty finding a line. By lap 24 we were running side by side with the #28 fighting for the 7 th position. With James trying to work high and low, he moved forward to sixth, and with 27 laps to finish we were posted in 5 th. With 49 laps down, Obermeyer and Null tangled in turn one with #93 sustaining more damage. With 23 laps to go, James was trying again to find a line and like most, was slipping when trying to hold the car in the middle groove.

With 16 laps to go, the #97 Berge entry had moved up to 4 th and we would finish this very warm late summer race behind #77 in fourth position. It is always nice to see a first time winner during this season, and we on the team all wish to congratulate Kenny Joosten for a very well run race. It was obvious that his car was really hooked up. We also want to thank our other competitors especially Bill Prietzel for racing us very clean. All competitors seemed to respect each other this day.

So now it is down to the end of the season, and we must settle this season championship at LaCrosse again. This time we must be cautiously aggressive to fight off our fellow racers to the checkers. We fully expect that Bill, Bobby, Jeremy, and Lyle will give us no slack, and that is the way we want to end this year. Let the best man win, and may all have a safe race and bring home their e quipment in one piece.

Want to see some hot racing action? Then attend the LaCrosse finale race on October 6 and stop to say hello to the team from the Hankscraft sponsored Berge Racing entry.

Racing to the Checkers

Jim