Edition 27, August 18th - 2008

We are not “Blue” after Kaukaunaome

Can owner Adam Berge and I spoke quite a few times during the week leading up to the third leg of the Red; White, and Blue racing series at Kaukauna. He was not too optimistic about our chances for a great finish there, as our previous records indicate. I decided to attend the race to see if I could muster up some moral support for the team. I arrived to see driver Swan with his head resting on his arms which were on the roof of the car. He looked at me and shook his head negatively, “Tight I asked?” “Tight he replied”

This tight condition has been our problem all year, so we did the usual shock change thing, and prepared for time trials. We would line up 16 of 28 entries. Prietzel would set fast time at 21.131 on his second lap. We tried to catch Bill’s fast lap time, but our best lap of 21.187 was a little short. The Shear #7 followed us and laid down a nice lap of 21.010 which I thought was remarkable, only to be bested by the #10 Gutnecht at a remarkable 20.840. We thought this would be a long night with speeds posted like this. More adjustments were made, and I walked around to talk to some of the other teams. We were fourth fastest and still fighting tight condition.

The eight lap heat race we were lined up in, might tell us if the adjustments we made were helping. We started in seventh position, and tried in and outside to move forward, and to our credit, we did advance but the #32 and #7 entries, just tracked better than we did and finally finished first and second in our heat. We would take the checker flag in fourth. More adjustments and now we realized the #32 Nowak vehicle was also fast and could come to the front through a crowd. We now had even more fast competition to deal with this evening.

We would start in 7 th position in the feature behind Nowak. By lap 4 of the 35 lap event, we advanced one position to 6 th , following the #62 Null car. Lap 10 and our world came apart as we bumped the #62 and sent it spinning. I was standing next to crew chief Stardy, and he said jokingly, they will probably send us to the back, which in fact they did. Lot’s of concern and angry moments followed. We would ride shotgun on the field, and all I could think of, is we would lose even more points on the leader tonight.

The #45 entry would take the restart pole with all the fast cars behind in the top eight spots. James kept his head in the game and on the restart he began to move forward past the cars in the rear. The teams continued to move towards the front, until lap 10 when Nowak and Prietzel tangled in turn one and both vehicles ended up in the outside wall. Gutnecht could not avoid the chaos and got the rear end crushed. Two vehicles could make it into the pits but the #5 was too severely damaged and had to be towed to his pit spot. I went to check on Bill, and he said we would be sore on Sunday after this incident. He did state he thought he gave the #32 enough room but when going over the bump in turn one, Lyle moved up slightly and collected both entries.

Upon the restart we were placed in the 13 th position. By lap 20 we advanced to 10 th, by lap 24 we were in 8 th, and lap 25 to 6 th. This would be the closest to the front this evening, but we made a large dent on the points lead and are now out of first place going to one of our favorite tracks the Milwaukee Mile. Congratulations to Jake Finney on his win at Kaukauna.

So on we go in a very tight points battle to Milwaukee. This is our customer appreciation day and we have a fairly large crowd attending to help cheer us on. Perhaps Mark Blume was correct in taking my lucky spark plug away from me. As James Swan and I stood next to each other after the race he looked up and pointed at the full moon. “See he said, full moon brings good luck.” It sure seems so this night.

See everyone at Milwaukee for hopefully as very safe race.

Racing to the Checkers,
Jim