You picked a fine time to leave me loose wheel...

Well, more to the point, Broken wheel... but I should start at the beginning.

 

It's been a trying couple of weeks... during the heat race week 3, we had a terrible motor stumble that was caused by moisture in the distributor cap, relegating us to a last place finish. We fixed it and ended up with a strong 3rd place run on horrible tires.

This week, Week 4, we were on a mission. No more bad stuff happening, we were going to kick some butt. And we did at the start, winning our heat race in fine fashion. The car was a little tight, so we spent our time between the heats and main working on the set up and boy howdy, did it show up in our performance come race time.

We started the main 8th and through a series of awesome moves, Scott took first place on lap 4. A caution on lap 7 led to a restart that put us back into 2nd, but by lap 14 we had the lead back and were looking great. we held a 1 to 2 car length lead on the 2nd place car, occasionally he would get right up to the bumper, but couldnt make the pass. Scott was driving his lines and I was confident we were going to win. Then on Lap 20, coming out of turn 4, I watched in horror as the left front wheel came shooting off of the car. Scott was able to swing the car wide off the track onto the 5/8 front stretch and avoid piling up himself and the other cars. When the car was brought back to the pits, the race was restarted and we went to inspecting what went wrong. I took one look at the car and noticed that all the lug nuts were still firmly attached and knew right away what happened. A look at the wheel confirmed my suspicions...

 

Broken wheel

Eyup... Shredded... torn right off the car. Project for this week... replace chrome wheels... I hate those things anyways!

Our 8th place finish has placed us squarely in a 21 point hole, now 4th in the standings. Not insurmountable by any means, but we have our work cut out for us. Stay tuned to see what happens... Next race is June 5th... See you there!