Tom Tom Needed

The kick off for our 2009 season has got under way earlier than we had expected or should I say earlier than we were telling people. We had planed to hit Lincoln as our opener but were just going to breeze in without people knowing or making much fuss, that was until the boss put out the press release stating we would be there. I guess he didn’t get the memo. Before we had even left the shop we had to over come a couple of issues which included the fact that the wing decals had not arrived which meant the cars were half finished so we swapped back to last years body panels. Next we loaded and were ready to head out but the truck wouldn’t start as a light was left on in the cab so we had to pull the side skirts of to be able to charge the batteries. Now, before you all think that ’m going to blame Hannagan like normal I’m not because Janet Day (other half of the famous John Day Push utes in WA) is sick of me blaming Hannagan or talking about his chicken legs and has told me to give it a rest, so I will. By the way have I told you that for Christmas next year we are going to buy Janet GPS  for her car because she gets lost driving from the house to Rockingham which you only make about five turns in total????

We hit Lincoln knowing that we would have to start at the rear because we had no handicap but it would still be a good shake down run. We weren’t much in the heat, got a little better in the B and made some changes for the A main. We got a decent start then switched from the bottom to go around the outside of the guy in front when everyone jumped on the brakes. I had stated earlier in the night that the brakes were terrible so when I jumped on the brakes not much happened. The next minute I’m pointed towards the sky like the space shuttle and over the radio I heard yellow, yellow, yellow and remember thinking your a little late on that call it’s about to be RED, RED, RED. Nothing to major but not the start we had hoped for. With Daryns name still on the side of the truck and the racecar we had several people come up and say to me bad luck Daryn so I went with it and let them think that it was Daryn that crashed the car not me.

Night two was Port Royal a race track that I had never seen before. We ran third in our heat which put us in the redraw and we drew position 11 out of 12. We ran 7th for most of the race before a  green white checker finish. On the restart we lost two spots mainly dew to the fact that we had knocked the front wing of avoiding a crash. All in all a decent run but still plenty of room to improve. Last weekend we hit the Grove on Friday night and Lincoln Saturday in our new color scheme for 2009 and have had a very good response to the new colors. The Grove we won our heat from pole and the car really felt good but still not right and with the invert and passing points started 10th in the main. We finished 11th even though  we were faster than a couple of the guys in front.

Lincoln Saturday we finished 3rd in the heat and started 11th in the main and finished a disappointing 6th. 
I am still struggling to get the car to sit down and rotate the corner the way I like it so this week we are changing some things around on the car to get it back to more of a standard car set up and then work forward from there. We will probably hit the PA scene again this week which to my friends think is funny as I have never been a huge PA fan as we seem to have had a lot of bad luck out there over the years. Even though we have had a couple of top 5 runs and ran second at the Outlaw show at the Grove in the past it’s a track that I have yet to figure out how to get the car right there. Actually some days I felt like I needed a GPS to get around the race track. Our new shirts are looking a great and should be in stock within the next two weeks

GAS IT UP! See you at the track soon!

BT