Edition 22, May 31st - 2008

"Duel at the Dells" - How True

With the temperatures finally moderating in this part of the world, we were happy to host the Mid American cars race close to our Wisconsin factory home location. Wisconsin Dells is known as a tourist trap for many, but the Dells racetrack is an icon for generations of racers. I vividly remember the 1957 Chevy stock cars, which were the racer’s first choice in the mid and late 60’s. Trickle, the Sauters and Reffners raced at this location decades ago and the sons of these families still bring their cars to this legendary location.

Pat and I picked our viewing vantage spot as I got out the scoring sheet for the time trials. We saved room for our friends and co-workers at this newly renovated facility. Joe, Lance and their staff have invested large sums of money and labor to make this facility very fan friendly with new seating, food services, souvenir area, and renovated pits. I would strongly urge you to attend races at this facility and support their efforts.

Time trials had our 97 Ford positioned to qualify in twentieth position. We felt this would be good position to see what our competition could do. The first seven cars were timing in the low 15-second range, until Bill Prietzel laid down a 14.762 on his second lap, which held until Lyle Nowak took over pole position with a 14.729. The Nowak time would be fastest until the #7 Shear entry put a 14.557 on the scoring tower. Kyle was fast last year at this track and won the feature. Of course we would never just hand over a pole position, so when it was our turn, James poured the juice to the #97 entry and posted a 14.686 second lap to position us second fastest for the evening.

Next would be the long wait between time trials and our turn to race. The entire team came over to sit in the stands with us while we waited. There was a lot of kidding around, messing with the sponsors, and just having a good time with friends. The team likes to call me Dad and I think I can accept that moniker as I refer to them as my spoiled kids. I have two sons that moved away, and now I inherited five more that like to keep me busy. The team left for the pits during the limited late series to finalize the car set up. “Car corners good on the inside” was James’ last words to me.

We started our 40-lap series race rather late in the evening. Our car was placed in eleventh position behind the #5 entry. In three laps we moved to 9 th, in five laps to 5 th, in 8 laps 4 th and on the 12 th lap to 3 rd but a spin by the 13 and 29 entries moved us back to 4 th. With 26 laps to go the #5 car had muscled his way to first position and we were in 5 th. Finally with 22 laps to go the final spin between the 40 and 27 cars brought out the yellow checkered flag (something I had never witnessed before) and the race was called due to time. We were all tired and disappointed.

So the teams all drove up to six hours for an eighteen-lap race, which is not fair to the drivers, fans or sponsors. The track owners had to call the race due to time. We were fairly confident that we could have ended in one of the top two positions this evening, but it was not to be. We did not damage the car, we found a mechanical problem that will help us when fixed and we will continue to run for the championship.

We will continue on to WIR raceway on June 14 th and we will return to this track in July and God willing put on a much better show for the fans. See you at the track.

Racing to the Checkers,
Jim