From the Pits The Parker Farms/Mondello Tech/Copperstate Tire race team has been busy. Victor took his late model to Blythe for the Feb 3rd race and the Feb 17th race. While we didn't take home a win, we have learned some things that will come in very helpful during the upcoming season Feb3rd race. We went out on Friday for practice. Chuck Lahorgue had given us a new set- up to try. We went out for two sessions and the car was so good we were tempted to load it and wait for race time. We tried a few more things and over the course of the weekend we found that the front brakes were beginning to show a performance degradation, however we didn’t worry about it too much. On race day we went out for practice and again the car was good. There were 12 cars which is a good car count for Blythe. Victor qualified 3 tenths of a second faster than he has ever done in the late model at Blythe with a 14.9 but Justin Johnson broke the track record with a 14.61. We got our race tires broken in and Matt noticed that the left front had lost a lot of air, I went and spoke with the tire guy and he said we should go out and qualify and then he would check it out. The tire turned out to have a fatal hole. He gave us a new tire but it was too late to get any laps on it and it was a lot different size than the other so it really played havoc on our set up. Chuck advised us to use the left front from practice even though it had a lot of laps on it because the size was closer. Victor was doing real well, it was a 50 lap race and it went 30 laps green. Then we had a couple of cautions. We were running 4th. With 7 laps left they restarted and Victor got a good run on the 3rd place car. The 3rd place car decided to come down the track and try to pass the 2nd place car at the same time. Two cars in the same real-estate doesn’t work. Blythe rules state that all cars involved in a yellow flag incident go to the back. We felt bad for the other car, but it was a racing deal and we meant nothing intentional. We had 6 laps left and went from the 12th spot to a 7th place finish. Not what we had hoped for, but the car handled so well until the tire problem threw off the setup, yet we were happy. The weekend of February 17th was a fight from the minute we unloaded. Victor and I rebuilt the brake calipers and put in new pads and felt that we had solved the brake problem before we had left home. But we were wrong; the master cylinder for the fronts was done. We don’t carry a spare. Seems that others had the same problem we found 3 other teams that replaced the same part so no one had any spares left. Matt Wolfe was coming on Saturday to help so he brought some spare stuff but he didn’t have exactly what we wanted. We installed what we had and made the best of it, but we just couldn’t get the handle back that Victor wanted. In qualifying Victor laid down a 14.794, what a surprise. Only problem was Shriner ran a 14.790, now that’s close, we gladly took teh second and went on. Went out for the feature 35 lap race. There were only 8 cars this time but the front 4 checked out. Victor was in 3rd from the drop of the green and was right there all night. There just weren’t any openings to get around. At lap 25 the 39 had used up his tires trying to pass the 26 and was sideways the whole back stretch and finally lost it. Victor got blamed. I couldn’t really fault officials as, unless you were standing at the right angle I’m sure that that’s the way it looked, but when it was over the front of our car didn’t have a mark on it, but we had to go to he back. With 6 laps left, they dropped the green and Victor went to work and made his way back to 3rd at the end. As the cars came into the pits the 39 came in after us and rear ended Victor to let him know how he felt. We spoke with track officials and they again assured us that they may have made a mistake and they would speak with the 39 car and team about proper behavior. The sad thing is that with the low car count and these other problems they are contemplating suspending the rest of the season for this division. We will have to see what they decide. We want to thank Matt Wolfe for his assistance the last two races. Matt has people of his own to try to ready for the season. Matt has tried also to help with some discounts on some new safety gear for Victor. We look forward to having Matt help us more in the coming year. Chuck LaHorgue of course still is the brains in this operation and we look forward to racing with Chuck at the track with the start of the Truck season. With the improvements in the late model the last two qualifying session it is exciting to get the truck season under way. Mr. Mondello has furnished us with some new parts that should help our engine program this season. We hope to get them in play soon. |
