Edition 28, September 2nd - 2008

The Magnificent Milwaukee Mile
(Or one more thing off my bucket list)

I must first apologize to our readers for the delay in printing this article. Our web designer was on a well-deserved vacation and I was waiting for the official finish results from the August 23 rd race at the Milwaukee Mile. So now after all things are back were they belong, I am ready to report on this great weekend!

I have been attending the races at this old girl, (the Milwaukee Mile) since Roger Mc Klusky, Don White, A.J. Foyt and in later years Dave Watson, Ramo Stott, and

Bay Darnell; and more recently Alan Kulwicki, Rusty Wallace, and Dick Trickle have graced this racing surface This year’s hospitality shown by the Mile staff, especially Brandon Tanner was beyond Hankscraft’s expectations. We sincerely appreciate all the interest shown by Brandon and his staff for our customer appreciation day at the Mile.

We hosted our Saturday festivities at Paulie’s across from the track, and had a great turn out of over 50 staff and employees for food, refreshment and fun. Our co-sponsors YRC Logistics brought 10 employees to the event. This was the third year we have hosted this party. We even had one of our competitor’s sponsors show up for the festivities. After distributing hats and shirts, we had drawings for prizes including a special package of tickets, pit passes, and meet and great with Kyle Bush won by our friends from the Howard Company.

As we entertained the guests, I got several calls about the delays in the race program due to the wet track. But finally I received a call from Adam Berge, owner of the 97. He asked, “Are you ready for some good news?” and he stated we set fast time. While waiting for more information he stated; “I think we established a track record”, which we did. Our fans at the event were overjoyed with the news. The team came over for questions, answers, autographs, and pictures. All too soon they needed to go back for instructions. James stated in the question and answer, that we had found a great set up and we would be fast especially in turn three.

But on to the highlight of my race career. I got to green flag the start of the race. This is something I have wished to do for several years, and I can tell you that the rush of the cars going under you as you wave the flag is indescribable. This is one more thing that I can cross off my bucket list.

The feature had us start in 14 th position; which we did not fear due to our fast car. Mark Pluer led the opening laps, then Kenny Smart took over with Bill Prietzel in third. We worked forward, with most of advance coming in the third turn. By lap twenty we had advanced to 5 th. The car got warm, and we were able to move to third, but could not move forward any more due to a general “looseness” which could not be corrected. We finished in third, behind Ross Zumbach and Finney.

So all in all we had a great day with fast time; track record, and third place finish. We gained a bunch of points and head to Marshfield on September 13, 15 points in front of second place Prietzel. The team is fired up and we think we have a good chance of victory at Marshfield, as we did last year.

We move on with four races left with several teams in contention for the season championship. We all hope we prevail, and for a personal reason I wish for another championship for another goal of “my bucket list”.

Racing to the Checkers,
Jim