It was the best of times, and the worst of times...

After Butch's strong run at The Dirt Track at Lowe's on Friday night, the team was optimistic heading into the FASTRAK Southeast event at Wythe Raceway on Saturday night. Unfortunately, that optimism was short-lived, as we knew we were in trouble after hot laps. Butch qualified 33rd out of 40 cars, which put him in 7th on the starting grid for the heat. The crew worked diligently to try to get the car working better, but to no avail. He finished the heat in 6th, forcing him to run the B-main to try to make the feature. The crew went to work once again, but just could not find the magic set-up for the car. Although it was not through lack of effort, his 6th place finish in the b-main would not be good enough to make the feature starting grid, so we were done for the night.

Sunday morning we awoke to gloomy skies and a forecast of 60% rain for the Princeton, WV area. This, combined with the FASTRAK Northeast event at Mercer Raceway Park waiting for us on Monday, compelled us to make the decision to head for home. The team pulled out of Wytheville, Virginia a little after 10 am and pulled into Tri-City Speedway around 5:30pm, just missing hot laps. Butch started and finished the heat event at Tri-City in 3rd place. The Invert Zero re-draw put him in 5th on the starting grid for the feature. The caution flag only flew one time in the event and this allowed the field to get spaced out with very little passing towards the end of the event. Butch crossed the finish line in 5th place, exactly where he had started.

We were thrilled to have survived three straight nights of racing with very little damage or issues and looked forward to having a strong run at Mercer Raceway Park on Monday for the Steel Valley Classic, FASTRAK Northeast Tour event. The night started off well with Butch racing his way from a 7th place start in the heat to a 3rd place finish. This secured him a spot in the feature event and put him in the re-draw for the top 12 starting spots. As luck would have it, he re-drew the 11th place spot to start the feature. The track had changed considerable from the heats to the feature, and alot of cars were struggling at the beginning of the race. A lap one crash shuffled the field and cause some confusion, but Butch re-started in 10th. He was running in about 8th place when disaster struck on un-lucky lap 13. A lead car spun going into turn one and Butch had no where to go and very little time to react. As a result, he crashed hard into the car sitting broadside in the corner, only to be hit two more times as other cars joined the crash. Luckily, Butch was able to walk away. The car, however, was not so fortunate. Both the left and right side front suspension was all but destroyed, and he also took a very hard hit to the left side rear quarter.

The crew took the day off on Tuesday to rest, but started to assess the damage on Wednesday. Their findings were not good. In addition to the front shocks, a-arms, and other suspension, the chassis is also bent, not just in the front, but in the rear as well. There was heavy sheet-metal and cosmetic damage as well.

Unfortunately, we are forced to take this weekend off to re-group. We hope to have the car ready for next Friday's Pro Late Model event at Lernerville Speedway. We have also made the very difficult decision to pare our schedule back to racing one night at week at Tri-City Speedway (barring any specials). This crash has put a serious dent in our racing budget for the year, so unfortunately we will have to sit out some events. Hopefully this will be a short-term change and we will be back to also racing at Mercer Raceway Park on a weekly basis soon.

Until next time...