More Ups and Downs

The 2009 season is barely three months old, but Butch and the Lambert Racing Team have already had their share of ups and downs and this past weekend was no exception.

It was a homecoming of sorts on Friday, June 5th as Butch returned to Lernerville Speedway to run in the Pro Crate Late Model event. He took the green flag for the heat event from the third spot and looked to finish there until a bad restart handed him the pole position. He pulled away to a significant lead to pick up the heat event win. For the feature, he drew the 5th starting spot and it was a really good race. He quickly raced his way to third place in the caution filled event. As the race went on, the leader broke, but Butch had been racing side by side and didn't get the spot at the line. Instead of restarting 2nd, he was relegated to third and put up a hard fought battle to capture a second place finish. We were very happy to come home basically in one piece with a top 3 finish.

With no racing at Mercer Raceway Park on Saturday evening, we headed to Tri-City Speedway on Sunday for a regular event. Butch started his heat from the outside pole and quickly took the lead. He cruised to his second heat event win of the weekend with a hard charging Max Blair nipping at his heels. An Invert Zero line-up was pulled for the feature event, putting Butch on the outside pole beside Mike Pegher Jr. As soon as the green flag dropped, it was apparent there was a problem. For the first few laps, Butch dropped to 4th, then charged back to 2nd, only to drop back again, this time to 6th. With only 5 laps on the board, he pulled into the pits leaving all of us to wonder what happened. Our initial investigation found a problem with the carburetor, forcing us to load up for the night. He was credited with a 12th place finish.

Monday evening the team dug a little further into the problem and found metal in the oil, which is not a good sign. The engine was pulled and given to Mike Ingram of Ingram Engines to check out. He discovered early Wednesday that a lifter had come apart. Not something you would expect to see in a motor that only has 14 nights of racing on it. Needless to say, we were pretty disappointed. The good news is that we will have the engine back in time for next weekend and will run last year's motor in the meantime.

This weekend, we will be racing at Mercer Raceway Park on Saturday Night and Tri-City Speedway on Sunday night.

We are also pleased to announce that we have new Butch Lambert Racing T-shirts available for order for only $10! We are also offering tanks, hoodies, sweatshirts and long-sleeved T's. Please contact me if you would like to place an order!

Until next time...