Edition 32, October 8th - 2008

We are the Champions

La Crosse has always been a favorite place to visit for the Francisco family. We have been visiting this area before we had children just because we love the scenery and visiting with our good friend Joe who lived there for many years. So when Hankscraft joined the Mid American series and we learned that the final race of the season was in La Crosse, Pat and I were very happy to be back to one our favorite haunts.

We went to La Crosse on Friday for a special weekend, as this would be the last race for the Berge-Swan team in the Mid Am #97 car. We had known for many months that Adam wanted to leave racing as an owner to spend more time with his family. This made the chase to the championship so important to us this year. We met the team at the La Crosse Speedway in the exhibition hall for music, discussion, and a wee bit of liquid refreshment. We talked about the past year, our failures, our good times, and possibilities for the future. The team had a great time teasing me about my recent fall, calling me the senior citizen and asking me if I needed a rascal to get around. I started to think that I am going to miss these good times.

Fast forward to Saturday, and I caught up with the team at the morning driver’s meeting. The team did not look as perky as the night before and had missed the morning practice. Good thing we had been much happier with the set up, so only a few set up changes would be necessary. This would be a long day, so I spent my time walking around, thinking again about all our friends in Mid Am, and hoped we would continue to meet each other at racing venues. My biggest fear this day was the unknown, having to race against drivers that we normally did not compete against.

Qualifying finally came for us late afternoon and we went out in 13 th position. We laid down a respectable 21.122 which was third fastest, but that only lasted until the next car went out with a 21.096. Other entries followed and had faster times yet. Spoonmore put up a 20.861 in the #22 entry, which would be fast time for this session. We would be 12 th fast time of the 37 cars entered which worked for us due to the inversion. A couple of the cagey veterans in our series had to race into the feature due to the fast times of others.

We won our heat race and the team tried to relax before our feature. As we were the last event of the evening we had to wait through the caution filled ASA race before us, and we finally rolled the cars on the track at 10:30. We were told we had to finish 20 th to win the championship, but the team really wanted more than this to finish our year and career.

We were positioned 2 nd on the inside to start the 35-lap feature. Lap one and the car slipped some on turn one exit, and we moved back to 5 th position. By lap 5 James piloted the car back to 3 rd and by lap 6 he advanced to 2 nd. By lap 15, the #97 was trying to find a way around the 28L entry, and the #36 Back stocker had moved up to 3 rd, putting pressure on us. The red #36 was fast and looked like he would give us the most pressure. On a restart with 12 to go, we were back in 4 th, but with a lot of driving skill, James moved back up to 2nd and was now getting pressure from friend Kenny Smart.

With 7 laps to go, James took the whip to the ponies, and finally passed the # 28L and proceeded to drive away from the field. We had to hold off the other cars one last time due to a late race caution, but on the restart we had the better car for the finish. We won our first race of the season and of course the championship for the third straight year. It was a beautiful burnout in winners circle.

So we move on, as perhaps it is someone else’s turn to win championships in Mid Am. Will we definitely walk away from the series? Will we move on to another series? Will the team members try to stay together? These answers will unfold in the next few months, and will report them as they occur. Keep watching this site, as I will continue to give my views on the Sprint and Nationwide-racing scene. Next week’s report will be my wrap up and a personal side of the Berge-Hankscraft racing association.

In the after hours party in the pavilion, I shook James Swan’s hand and thanked him. “Why are you thanking me, he asked,” I said thanks for letting us be a part of your great racing career, and he stated to me, that the sponsors are what made him have the determination to always be Racing to the Checkers.

Jim