Mother Nature wiped out area racing on Friday night but she brought some HOT action on Saturday night at more than one track. The heat and other factors provided a less than optimal track at Midvale and everybody's lap times showed it. It would be a guessing game trying to make changes on the car as the sun went away and a decent starting spot in the feature would be key in any chance at a win. Starting out the night by running away with the Heat race win would also provide some momentum for later in the evening. That's exactly what Miller did and then went with just one small change to the car before the feature. Starting on the outside of the second row it was clear that he wouldn't be laying back and waiting long to make his move. He needed to get out of that ugly outside groove as soon as possible and I was simply hoping he could slip into 3rd early and take some time going forward from there. Silly me! At the drop of the green he launched the thing diving deep into turn one and wrapped up second place before half a lap was in the books. A caution shot down his first bid for the lead but he wouldn't be denied for long. The next restart was all he needed to take the lead and start his chase for those checkers. Unfortunately there would be plenty more cautions and those double file restarts are enough to give a guy gray hair, but Mike has been there enough times he handled it like a true veteran. Holding off very strong challenges on each restart and then running away after a couple green flag laps it was clear that this was his race and nobody was going to take it away this time. Well, at least nobody on the track could. We were told after the feature that they wanted to pump the engines of the top 2 finishers. Knowing we're perfectly legal I'm more than happy to go along with that but why stop at the top 2? Normally you see the top 5 get pumped and I'd love to see the whole damn class get pumped. The real fun began after we got pumped and loaded the car to go home. We were then told that their math shows that the engine is too big. You can probably guess my first response but I won't go into that here. Anyway, in order to avoid any doubts or rumors we decided it was best to unload the car and do it again instead of waiting until next week to prove our innocence. Of course the second time it showed just how legal the engine is and now we can move on and celebrate a damn good night. Hopefully this pumping idea will spread through the entire pits before long to clear things up.

Speaking of damn good nights, it sure sounds like the Hoschtetler Sprint team has been having some fun of their own over at WCS. On Saturday night rookie driver Brent Coffman qualified 4th and made the Dash race! As if that wasn't enough excitement for this fella that has never driven any type of race car before this season, he went on to pick up a 4th place finish in the Feature. Hell, I remember the thrill of watching him make his very first on track pass just weeks ago at Hilltop and now he's pulling off a top 5 in a pretty damn strong field of veterans! Hats off to ya Brent and congrats to the entire team. You just might see me out there soon to witness the action first hand. Imagine that race fans! ;-)