Team Crown

Husets Results 8-24

It wasn't really the night we looked for, but it's in the books none the less!  We started 4th in the heat race, and Jody accidentally hit the switch in the car going into the first turn and the car turned off!  That saw us playing catch up and Jody driving hard to make the transfer spot in the invert.  It's funny in hindsight, but it could have been pretty bad because the car just wants to drive straight to the wall when that happens, but he did a good job of getting it turned on quickly again!  We started 12th in the feature on yet another narrow, hard to pass race track.  It was pretty tough to get through some of the traffic, and we finally managed to work our way up to 4th place.  We may have done better if we'd gotten a caution, but everyone did a fine job keeping their cars straight, and no problems for anyone.  Jody did well given the track, so we're not disappointed with our performance by any means.  We are a little disappointed in the track lately though.  It's been pretty narrow and heavy for about a month now, and we wished they'd put a little less water on it.  But, it is what it is and everyone races on it!

Want to congratulate Eric McGillivary on a nice run last night.  He looked strong in the feature and did a nice job taking the win in a non stop feature!

We're not sure if we'll be in Jackson this weekend with one of our engines still down, but we'll see what happens between now and then.  Otherwise, it's a double header at Husets this weekend!

Weekend Results

I'll break this down to Jody and Travis in separate parts, and then on to Husets so I can keep all this straight!

Friday night Jody had no luck whatsoever.  We were chasing engine troubles and finally in the heat the thing just died.....which it turns out the mag box had been going bad, and finally just gave way.  He had to start last in the B, and ran up to 5th which was one spot from transferring.  Saturday he had the worst draw at the track, and had to start 9th in the last heat.  He did a great job running up to 4th, and that gave him a spot in the top 8 in points.  We ended up with the pole for the dash and we ran 2nd to Brian Brown so we were able to start on the front row for the feature.  Something must have galled up our torque tube during the dash (we find this Sunday afternoon), because immediately he knew the car wasn't right.  The whole rear end was bound up due to the torque tube problem, and the car just wouldn't drive off the corner like it should at all.  That left him pretty much a sitting duck and he held on for 7th in the finale.  All in all it wasn't bad, but a little disappointing knowing we could have been much better.

Travis on Friday said the engine was pretty flat right away and we fooled around with it quite a bit to get it as good as we could, and he ran pretty well......then he lost the brakes and couldn't really run up there any further than he did.  Starting 13th and running 5th for the night with no brakes isn't too bad.  Saturday he ran 2nd in the first heat and started 9th in the feature.  Immediately you could see he might have a car to contend with, but about 4 laps into the race he lost a cylinder and ran the rest of the race on 7 cylinders.  He felt we were good enough to contend with the top 3, but being way down on power it was all he could do to come home in an 8th place finish.

All in all, considering the issues we had at Jackson, we'll call it an alright weekend, but know it could have been better possibly.

Now on to Husets......we're going to get raked over the coals on this one I'm sure!  We won the first heat and drew a 1 for the invert meaning we'd start on the pole.  After some haggling with a few people who put up some bonus money for us to win from the back, we agreed to the challenge.  This is where it gets shaky for most people!  Apparently there was some miscommunication between the announcer and the pit steward, and we were told we couldn't do it.  I walked over and asked the pit steward what was going on.  I asked him if we were able to do this or not.  Needless to say he was not a happy person, and it seemed like a big problem for all of this to happen I guess.  I told him if it was that big a problem, then fine we'd start where we were supposed to.  If it wasn't a problem we'd like to take the challenge.  He still seemed a bit upset (a bit would be an understatement), so we said to heck with it, we'll follow what he wishes and start on the pole.  We DID NOT turn down the challenge.  I'm told that the announcer made an issue of it, and made it look like we turned it down and the crowd was never informed of the real situation.  It's unfortunate that we're the ones that look stupid in this situation, and nobody will fess up to the truth.  Speaking of the "challenge".....I want to thank Scott Bolte Sanitation and 212 the Boiling Point for the offer.  We'd love to have tried.  I'm also told later after the races that someone else had put up $1000 more for us to do it.  We certainly got alot of boos when Jody climbed from the car for what they thought was us turning it down.  Hopefully an opportunity like this will come again, and we'll be able to attempt to win it!

That's it for now.....hope everyone in the stands at Husets reads this and gets the real story!  See everyone next week at Husets!

An Update Finally

It's been a while since I've been able to get here to update you on Knoxville, but here goes.....

We ended up with the worst draw possible and had to go out second to last in qualifying due to another car showing up late, otherwise we were supposed to be the last car out.....Don obviously knowing the track well was able to time in at 21st out of 61 cars which is pretty good.  We felt the engine needed a little help for the heat race, so we tried to play a little with the fuel which ended up being a bad idea and we went backwards in our heat to 4th from the outside front row.  The feature we started somewhere in the 7th row and that about where we finished as well with a 13th place finish.  Not a great night for us, but not terrible either.

Saturday we started 12th in the B feature and had the best car overall we had all weekend.  We were running pretty well, and had picked off some cars quickly.  We were closing in on transfer positions and ended up with contact on the backstretch with another car which just about flipped our car.  That allowed 4 several cars to get by us and left us with a 10th place run in the B feature.  We were really good enough to transfer out of that B feature, and probably make some noise in the A feature, but it wasn't to be.  Overall I'd grade our performance as a B.  The engine we fought the sweet spot just a little, but got it better as we went.

Sunday in the Brodix Tournament of Champions we qualified towards the end of time trials again, and had a time that gave us the front row....which was good, because the track was very narrow during the heats.  We won the heat handily and started the feature 6th.  We were a good car, but not a stellar car for the feature and passed a few cars, but were passed by a few cars as well.  We ended up getting passed late when the engine started to get a little warm for 4th....but a 5th place finish was a decent night for us.

This Sunday Husets was a fast and narrow track.  It was very hard to pass on, and we started the feature from 8th place.  We made a few passes and had one car drop out in front of us to move us into 2nd place by the last 1/3 of the feature.  We were unable to pass for the lead, but showed our nose a few times.  On the 2nd to the last lap we blew a power steering line, and that really made the car a hand full for Jody, and we settled in for a 2nd place finish.

Up next.....the Jackson Nationals with Jody in a car and Travis Whitney in a car!