Rain and Supers

I had planned on seeing the first BRP Can-Am 360 LM race of the season this past Friday at Black Rock, but it was canceled Friday morning. So, we tried going to the races at Woodhull Saturday. The skies weren't looking great, so that was a bad decision in the first place. We got there, saw the end of 4 cylinder hot laps and the first Modified heat and that was it. (besides packer trucks messing around on the slippery high banks). So Saturday turned out to be a wash too.

I had been watching the weather all week for Sunday at Oswego and it looked like we were good to go. I'm glad we went because it was a nice Sunny day, just really cold with the wind. Hotlaps were eventful to say the least. First was a spin involving A.J. Russel in the Morton 70, Kelly Miller (16), and Otto Sitterly (7). The 7 & 70 had some front end damage, but were able to get them back together in time for the heats. Then came the big one... Craig Rayvals had a stuck throttle down the backstretch and pounded the turn 3 foam, flipping violently on impact. (See photos here). Todd Stowell in the 89 car also had a run-in with the wall. Watching practice, Timmy Jedrzejek (8), Randy Ritskes (32), and Charlie Shultz (7) seemed to be the fastest. When time trials were all said and done, it was Timmy J. on pole with a new track record! DJ Shullick was close behind and had a lap only thousandths off the previous track record as well. The supermodified feature started off looking like it was going to be a great race. Randy Ritskes, Greg Furlong, Timmy J, and Charlie Shultz were all on the move early in the going. Ritskes looked by far to be the fastest car on the track while out front the 19 of Moe Lilje was walking away. Things got wild however about 15 laps in to the 40 lap main when the leaders came up on the drastically slower #21 of Matt Palmer. Ritskes and Furlong split the 21 coming out of turn 4 with Ritskes on the bottom. Just as he got almost by, Ritskes was tagged in the right rear by the slower car turning him violently almost head-on into the outside wall and collecting with him Greg Furlong and Randy Burch (52). The Soule 32 and the Furlong 72 were pretty messed up in the incident and will need substantial repairs to get back racing again. The 52 suffered only minor front end damage. Shortly after the ensuing restart, after a lengthy red flag to clean up the frontstretch, the 19 of Moe Lilje had a catastrophic rear end failure. This handed the lead over to his teammate Shullick in the 49. During the middle portion of the race the 49 got out to a sizeable lead over the rest while Shultz and Jedrzejek fought through traffic to run 3rd and 4th. With 10 to go, the 8 was really reeling in the 49, getting very close to being able to pull off a pass for the win. With 5 to go, he clipped the left rear tire which broke off the right side of the #8's nose wing causing a debris caution. With part of the wing gone, the #8 was too tight to keep pace with the 49. So the final top three went 49, 8, 7. All in all it was a pretty good day at the track for us. I know my friends (who had never seen supermodifieds before) loved it. It was also cool of Charlie Shultz, driver of the May #7, to give my friends an explanation of how the moving wing functions and offer to answer any other questions they may have.

Next up: This Saturday, May 10, is the season opener for the newly renamed Dunn Tire Raceway Park. A decent field of 17-20 modifieds is expected including the returns of Karl Hehr in the 59 and Dave Wollaber in the 5. It's great to see Karl back racing after his terrible accident at Lancaster in '06. I'm also glad to see Dave Wollaber back in a modified. As talented as a driver as he is, I couldn't believe all last year he didn't have a modified ride. This Saturday will also be my first time going to the races and trying out this writing gig. I'm definitely looking forward to that.