It's finally that time of year that we all hate to see come around. Many tracks have ended their seasons weeks ago and we're even running out of special shows to take in. I've been fortunate enough to make it to those special shows the past 4 weekends, but I'll have to pass on the DTWC once again this year. Bummer! The past 4 weekends have just about worn me out but it's been a blast. It's been a long and crazy summer for sure. We saw Hilltop go through major changes, Lakeville pick up the Sprints, WCS win their court battle, and Mike Miller pick up yet another Championship. Yep, that's enough thrills and spills for me.
As for this past weekend, I made my first trip to Lorain County Speedway for their Halloween Festival Of Speed. Mike promised me that this track was as close to a dirt track I'd find at an asphalt track, and he wasn't kidding. However, I've never seen any dirt track run quite like this one. Can you imagine a track charging to park in their own damn parking lot, even for regular show? What a crock of shit! There was enough down time between qualifying and racing to completely rebuild a fuggin dirt track. I didn't see a grader or sheeps foot so I can't imagine what the hell the delay was all about. ;-)
Friday was spent testing and it seemed to pay off. Since Lorain dropped the Late Models a while back Mike rarely gets much track time there, but by the time I got there he looked right at home. He qualified second, missing the top spot by just .01/ second. Strangely enough they don't count the Dash race as a heat race so he would have 3 total races to run on Saturday night including a race between Modifieds and Late Models. The Dash went well with Mike taking second. For the rest of the night the focus was on saving the car for Sunday so the heat race and Modified race were uneventful other than dodging some ugliness. Sunday brought the 50 lapper that we'd been looking forward to. Starting near the back of the field shouldn't be a major problem and would allow him to stay out of trouble early. That didn't mean he would just ride around and watch the show though and he started working his way forward a few laps into it. All was looking good until he suddenly shot towards the infield coming off turn 4 and there was silence from under the hood. That's never a good thing and it turns out that it was fatal. The mounting bracket for the oil pump decided to call it quits a little too early, and the damage was done. At least there's no "window" in the block, but I'm sure it's not pretty in there. At least it waited until the last event of the season, but it sure would have been nice if it waited just a little longer. ;-) Time to look towards the 2009 season I guess.........................
If you need one more local racing fix, Hilltop is the place to be on October 25th. They'll be running Late Models, Modifieds, and Mini Stocks. Plans for a November 8th Enduro event are also being finalized. With more time to plan for that event, I would have sure as hell built a car for another Enduro. Those are just plain fun!
