Wow, I must be getting lazy in my old age….well this past Friday was really nothing to write home about. I started 15th and finished 11th. I was looking at 9th and while going to the outside of another car on the front stretch he came up and pinched me into the wall which caused me to lose a lot of momentum….to tell ya the truth I almost lost the car, haha. I regained control and it was only a couple more laps  so there i was 11th place and in one piece.

  Well last Friday was a career best for me in the in the Budget Sportsman class. I started 19th and finished 4th….man was I pumped. I was the 2nd fastest time during the race to the leader by just .322 seconds or just over a quarterof a second. Anyways the ol girl was hooked up on the outside and thats where I kept it. Got by 15 cars that way so it must have been working…well back to the track this Friday 6/19 for my next points night. Its been a dreadful year for points and i just have to take it one race at a time. Still have the rest of the season and I think I can get into the top 10 if all goes well, right now Im 28th after 2 terrible finishes. Looks like I have my work cut out for me. Wish me luck and see ya soon, its time to get going!!!

Mike

  Well its been a couple weeks since my last update. Actually I did not even race this past Friday due to a backlog of projects at the camp and crappy weather to boot. Last Friday though was a sight to see…well not really. The car was good in warm ups as usual (cant really tell much) but I was pumped about starting up front. Well at least I was supposed to start up front by virtue of the top 12 from the previous week being inverted, meaning I finished 12th the week before and I should have started 1st. But seeing that my usual black cloud was in full bloom I was relegated to starting 3rd…(dont ask me). So anyways, the green flag drops, the car takes off like a rocket and I proceeded to run up the back side of the 2nd place car and flatten the right front (brand new tire) and fold up the rim. Here we are….lap one and Im already an idiot. They bring out the caution for me and the crew (Jeff, Kevin and Kale) throw on the spare in the hot pit area. I proceed to the track only to held by the pit flagger who for some unknown reason, holds me there for it seemed like eternity, and then sends me out!! I look up the front straightaway and here comes the whole field of 24 cars!!!! I was as they say “an angry young man” at this point. man did the ol girl start honkin….haha. I passed 6 cars in 2 laps and the  leaders never caught up to me. Yellow came out and i was on the move at the next restart. I think I got up to 15th but by doing so went off the backstretch and got the car sideways off the track and was taking some heavy hits of heavy clay into the underside of the car. Well that all leads up to the bad news….motor was losing power, thought she was done. I could practically collapse the floor board with the throttle I was pushing it so hard. So I start getting passed by cars I had already gotten by and I was hoping at this point the race would just end……I think I got 19th, unreal. So we load up and set sail for home. The next morning I cant sleep of course and Im out in the garage around 7am unloading the car and I look underneath and see a plug wire hanging down. It got ripped off when I was doing my Dukes of Hazard remake on the backstretch. The last 8 laps on 7 cylinders……

  Well here we go again. This Friday the 5th of June the circus heads back to the “great race place”. I will once again have to qualify through the heat race and hopefully get a decent starting spot for the feature. Car is just about ready and Im getting excited to get back at it. Last year My buddy Kevin took me by the shoulders and said one word “patience”. I have it written on my dry erase board in the trailer….i need to start reading it before I jump in the hot rod, and no more Rockstar Energy drinks before I go out….haha!!! Well as usual, wish me luck. Thanks for reading……

Mike 

  Sorry folks…where do I start?? Oh yeah we left off with me all depressed and wanting to turn things around, well the last 2 weeks I won 2 heat races and the car is getting better. The night I won my first heat race i advanced to the feature only to get into a 14 car pile up. Only 2 cars were towed off the track…yup-me and 1 other. Then the rain came and we ran double features this past Friday and it was kinda bittersweet. I won the heat race but then in the first feature had some issues (fuel pickup again!!) and had to pull off. I finished 22nd, the worst finish I have ever had. The second feature I started 14th and got up to I think 10th and finished 12th. The car felt pretty good but I was just having trouble with traffic.

  I had the pleasant surprise of one of the head engineers from www.BicknellRacingproducts come over to my car and start looking it over. This is the company that makes my car. Its kinda like Henry Ford coming over and looking at your Mustang. Randy Williamson is his name and he was recently featured in Circle Track magazine for setting race cars in the Northeast. I think I was in shock…he started measuring things and asking me questions and in other words the car needed some changes to be better. I cant believe how much this guy knows. He gave me about 6 changes to make on the car and here we go…this Friday I guess I will find out!! The weather looks great and I think Im starting up front- THE CONFIDENCE IS BUILDING!! Oops sorry just another dream I was having. Well wish me luck and I cant wait to throw my “new” hotrod into turn 1…I will know right away if I did the right things….talk soon,

Mike

Well the only thing I dont like about being locked into the top 12 for the feature is that you only have 1 chance in warm ups to make adjustments to the car…3 laps maybe. Well I never got to make any changes and the car was junk. Finished 14th out of 26 but I started 4th….I never got the car handling until about halfway through the race but even then- too late. I need to get this thing right and I am becoming very frustrated. Got some help coming over Tuesday night, Todd Ryan who drives in the modified division lives locally and he is going to see what Im doing as far as setting the car up and adjusting to track changes. He lives here in Galway and its going to be nice to get some experience as far as driving skills to help me with some other ideas. Yup, beating myself up again but my performance sucked and I need to get better. Found some carb problems (again) but no excuses, A better driver would have adapted…..better news after this coming Friday. Hope to see ya out there when this thing gets turned around, wish me luck. At least the Celtics advanced…..

 Mike

 Well the weather was awesome and I was glad to see some surprise guests in attendance…my folks showed up!!! Best of all I finished the races without any incidents. I lead 4 out of the 8 laps of my qualifying race and I started 13th and finished 9th in the feature. I was actually 8th with 2 laps to go and started to have a fuel problem. The same thing happened in my qualifying race, the pickup in the bottom of the tank may be the culprit. I will get into the tank this week and check it out. Man…you should have seen Jeff, Val and I scurrying around when I made the decision to change the carburator!! We looked like a professional crew!! To no avail the same problem repeated itself and that’s when i knew it was a problem with the fuel tank pickup.

  I had the oppurtunity to stop over to Morris Ford on Rt 50 to get some free passes and met Mark Kislowski. He drives the #3 sportsman at Fonda/Malta. We had a lengthy discussion about the car set ups and some things I could try to get the car to handle better. Mark actually invited me over to his house to give me some tips on tire prep. Nice set up he has over there, open the garage door and 3 racecars on jacks sitting side by side atop a shiney floor….someday, well the shiney floor I mean. Well the ol hot rod should be good for tis Friday night. Wish me luck and hope to see ya there. Adios for now…

Mike