Midvale closed the books on another season this past weekend with their Fall Classic event. Mike decided to get in a rare day of testing in on Friday to prep for the big show and it allowed us to fine tune the new setup and try some other ideas for future reference. The cool weather and green track sort of worked against each other at first but once the track had some laps on it Mike was clicking off some great lap times. Not only were the times good, but they stayed consistent throughout several test sessions. Things were looking great for the big show so we loaded the car and headed for home. Saturday afternoon brought some surprises though and not good ones. The track had slowed down overnight, but the car seemed to slow down even more for no apparent reason. With limited chances to track down the speed we lost, qualifying didn't go so well. We knew the speed was there and were determined to find it but that lead to another dilemma. Running under your qualifying time by as little as .15/second at Midvale will bring out the black flag and nobody wants that to happen while leading a big race. Mike has experienced this before, and he was sure as hell not looking forward to it again. That meant he'd need to breakout during the heat race and get it over with, or start scratch in the feature to avoid breaking out. Starting last in the wreck filled heat race didn't allow for the first option, even though he took the lead and ran away on the last lap. That left a really tough decision. He could either start 3rd and more than likely pick up a fairly easy win if he didn't break out, or start scratch and take his chances that the car was good enough to get back to the front. He chose the safest option and started scratch. As usual that meant he'd dodge plenty of ugliness along the way, but he's pretty used to that by now. Before long he could see the front of the pack and quickly went to running them down. He wouldn't make it all the way to the lead but the final laps had the top 4 bunched up tight, with Mike scored 4th at the drop of the checkers. Not bad for as strange as the night seemed to go, and the car came home in one piece.
It's important that the car came home undamaged from Midvale because it will be in action this weekend at Lorain County Speedway for their Halloween Festival Of Speed. This will be a weekend event with 8 classes putting on the show, including the Hilltop Mini Trucks! Come on Truck guys, come on up and show them what the dirt folks can do on the pavement. Just don't go bumping people out of the way,,,, Craver! ;-)
The season is quickly running out on all of us so even if you can't make it out to Lorain this weekend, do yourself a favor and get out to any race track you can before the snow flies. The winters around here can be pretty damn long and all we'll have is our memories on those cold Friday and Saturday nights in the coming months. Get your racing "fix" while ya can!!
