Opening Night At Old Dominion Speedway 2012

Weekly Update 4/14/12

David Makes His First Start Of The 2012 Racing Season

David Signing An Autograph After Saturday Nights Race

Saturday’s Practice

Saturday morning we got to the track early in anticipation of the start of the 2012 racing season. We felt pretty good about how the car was handling after the two pre-season practice days and how fast the car was for those sessions.

We went out for the first practice on some old tires to shake the car down. David said the car seemed a little bit tight (the car won’t turn in the corners) but the lap speeds were decent for the amount of laps on the tires. We put on some scuff tires for the second round and it didn’t take long for David to call in on the radio and say the car had gotten extremely tight. He pulled the car in and we made some adjustments and went out for the third round of practice and the car was much better, he was third on the speed chart.

Qualifying

The team prepped the car for qualifying and then took it through final pre-race tech; David lined up about 6th to go out for qualifying. David’s lap time was good enough for sixth fastest, not as good as we hoped, but worse than that David said the car felt like it was getting tight again. We worked on the car some more to loosen it up for the race. For a change, luck was on our side and they decided to invert six cars for the main event and that put David on the pole. We felt pretty good about the changes we made to the car and felt that he would be able to race good.

75 Race

On the start of the race David was able to jump in to the lead and got out four or five car lengths on second place, and we decided to ride there so we he wouldn’t use up his tires. David held the lead through two cautions and about 35 laps even though he said the car was still too tight, that’s when the second place car was able to get up to his back bumper in turn two and he got into David turning him sending him up the banking to the wall; he missed the wall but dropped back to third place in the process. Even with an ill handling car David was able to stay in third through several more cautions and restarts until finally the fourth place car gave him a nudge with about eight laps to go. David hung on to fourth for the rest of the race and finished fourth. Not what we were hoping for, but opening night has never been good to us.In David’s first late model race ever we blew up a motor on lap 57. The next year we fault electrical problems all day and last year with a half of a lap lead he broke a spindle with 3 laps to go. So, we will take the fourth place finish and a race car in one piece with no damage, back to the shop and start to get it ready for next Saturday night at Old Dominion. 

Denny Hamlin Short Track Showdown

Practice

This Wednesday we head to the Richmond International Speedway in Richmond Virginia for an open practice session for the invitees to the Denny Hamlin race. We have to be at the track by 7am and we will be on the track from 12 noon -5pm. David has put together several fundraisers to help us get to this race which will have 12 celebrity drivers including Denny Hamlin, Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch. We are very excited about this opportunity and can’t wait for the race the following week. The race will be live on the Speed Channel on 4/26/12 @ 8pm. In order for David to be in the race he will have to qualify his way by being in the top 24 of the 47 invitees, so Wednesday’s practice session is very important. Wish us luck and thanks for all of the support over the years.