From the Pits Dear Race Fans, It was hot, but a great night at Orange Show Speedway for the Parker Farms/Mondello Tech Center/LaHorgue Race Cars entry. Victor scored his first top five on an oval in a Speed Truck. He qualified 5th, which is our best this year, and finished the night in 3rd. We were in the trophy dash but in 5th place you really don’t have a chance to win without risking the safety of the truck. We just used it for a last minute test. Victor was fast all weekend. His times would have put him solidly in the show from the first lap on Friday practice; we just worked to get a little better. If you take the two races out of the Speed Truck year that we had no control over, Victor has done very well with 2 top tens and one top five. It was disappointing not to take the Late Model, I love to watch him drive that car, but we couldn’t find any help and it was probably just as well because of the heat. We will try again to take it when we return there in the fall. The Speed Truck officials have announced that there will be a TV package after all. It will be on OLN this year with 8 races being broadcast. We will get details out, as we are made aware. The next race at Madera will be the first to be taped for these shows. It will be cool this year with the in car camera that Victor has. If anyone wants their logo on the in car camera let us know and we will get the financial details. The relationship between Victor and Chuck LaHorgue just gets better every time we race. Victor and Chuck worked through the heat and just fine-tuned the setup until we were pretty awesome. Truck number 35 Randall King was fast time at 14.095 and Victor came in with a 14.15. That is close, especially for us. We have watched as some of the new drivers come into the series and set some pretty good qualifying times only to be very slow once the feature race starts. We seem to be the opposite. During the middle of the race Darren Young seemed to just be on cruise control. He would pull a lead on us and then just sit there, but late in the race we had a better set up and we were catching second place Lee Hatch. Both Lee and Darren are veteran drivers of the series and have many years in these trucks. Also we tried some new things with engine tuning that I believed helped and I want to thank Daryll Patullo and Joe Mondello for their respective input in helping me make it better. I will be working with them again before the next race to try some more ideas. Our next race is at Madera California. We haven’t ever been there before, but neither have most of the other drivers we will see if this levels the playing field a bit. Please check out the website as Jack Waterman has worked hard to come up with some new content. Jack has done a great job with our site and has become a great friend and supporter. We hope we can keep his creative genius going. Lastly, Jim Clinton has worked very hard to come up with some new things for the team and we are finishing these up this week. If anyone of our fans have any marketing ideas let me know and I will pass them on to Jim or put you in touch with him. We also have hero cards available to everyone for the asking along with posters. You can furnish these to your local pub or dining establishment, just let us know. |
