DFC Racing - We Survive Opening Night!

I'm not sure where to begin describing an opening night that consumed our entire Saturday, but didn't consume our entire car this time. I guess I'll start with the racing part before I go into the other stuff. We knew the rains would come when Richie pulled the #1 starting spot for the heat race, but they didn't come in time to save him from a start that turned ugly at the drop of the green. He found himself beating on the shifter as the field blew by and pulled away. Once he got rolling again, he did manage to make up some ground but it was obvious that we were either way off on gear or had other problems. His 7th place finish put him into the B-Main where he started 7th. We had tried another carb for this race and he decided to try another groove on the track too. Things looked a little better this time and he worked his way to a 3rd place finish. It was quite a battle at the stripe with our good friend Denny Shear but Richie got him by a nose. One more lap and it mighta been a different story though cuz Denny was on one hell of a roll all night. Dave McMillen loaned us one of his carbs for the feature to try to help with our problems but it wasn't enough to cure it all. From his 16th starting spot he did manage to pull off a 10th place finish though while searching every inch of the track for a smooth spot. We'll gladly take a top 10 finish any time the car comes home in one piece. If you remember this time last season we were unloading a destroyed race car right now. We think we know where the problem is and we should have the parts to make it better, if not cure it completely. Since we don't have to start next week with a totally rebuilt car it should be much easier to get this thing where it needs to be very soon. We may not have had the kinda night we wanted but we kinda had to expect it since we had no test time with this new motor. Some other folks like Denny Shear and Dave McMillen had quite a night though. As I mentioned, Denny was getting it done all night and Dave damn near pulled off a heat race win right off the trailer. He started 2nd in the feature and had one hell of a battle with the top dogs out there til he got shoved aside more than once and ended up getting shoved right off the track. He was more than a little pissed off last night but looking back he's gotta be happy with the night overall. It was quite a run for opening night. Well, it was kinda opening "day/night" and that brings me to the rest of the story. We all understand that it was the first night of racing of the new track owners so it may not go as smoothly as it should. I'm not so sure they plan to improve on certain other things though unless maybe they hear from enough of you folks out there. The first change I noticed was the new pit pass. Not only is it way too easy to lose, but it's a pain in the ass to dig it out each time you need to go through a gate. Then you need a seperate pass just to exit the gate and show both of them to get back in. What the hell was wrong with the pit pass idea that has worked for so many years? The next strange change was at the drivers meeting. They tossed out the judgement call which may not have been a bad change but the new rules will send you to the tail if you spin or stop to avoid a wreck no matter what. However if you spin somebody and you don't stop, you keep your spot and they go to the tail. This actually happened at least once last night. Great idea, depending on who you are I guess. Then we head to the scales to see how much weight we need to add in order to be legal. Not only are the scales not zeroed correctly, but the scale operater didn't know the legal limit for our class. It's not posted on the list at the scales with the other classes. The first time through he was giving thumbs up to cars showing 200 pounds light. Of course once the scales were adjusted many of them were legal weight but talk about confusion. The most noticable change besides the time factor was the lack of a tech inspector. If there was one there he was hiding pretty good cuz nobody I talked to saw one all night. We were told at the meeting that the rules will be strictly enforced for once out there. How the hell can you do that if nobody even looks at any of our cars on opening night? We were also told at that same meeting that all classes are equally important to the track and will be treated that way. The time schedule says different though and that's the biggest problem I see this year. We're suppose to hot lap at 1:30 and run our heat races at 2:00. Then if we make it to the feature from the heat race, we sit for 7 freaking hours before we run again. That's longer than the entire show took to get in last year!! It's almost a blessing to run a B-Main because we only get to sit for 5 1/2 hours before running again.I've already heard from enough friends, fans, and even fellow racers that don't plan to make many trips out to the track because of all this. It's just plain crazy to waste an entire day at the track when most of the time is spent sitting on our asses. I know I won't even bother to bring my own family out there this year and that's a real shame. The owners said they wanted to make it more of a family affair yet many families will be chased away by the new time schedule. I sure hope that all the folks that talked to me last night about this and the rest of you out there make your feelings clear to those folks at WCS. I'm not trying to start a bitch fest but damn they've taken the fun out of racing and that's the exact thing they talked about not doing. Oh well,,,it's time to get busy on the car and focus on the good parts I guess..........


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