Tornados 100 Update 5/28/11

David Passing For 4th

Tornados 100

Powered by On The Run

The Tornados 100 Lap Race Powered By On The Run Was The Featured Event Of The Night.

With the race season at Old Dominion Speedway being slowed by rainouts, the track staff has scheduled several nights of twin feature races for the Late Models. Saturday night was the first added double night, and the Tornados 100 was split into two 50 lap segments. As in the past, double race nights make for some interesting racing and this night would not be any different.

Practice

Each week the NASCAR Late Models get three rounds of practice to tune their cars for the nights racing. Saturday afternoon during practice, things took a bad turn when the new steering box we installed during the week was not performing properly. The scramble was on to get it replaced in time for qualifying; that’s when things got worse.  The steering box we put in the car wouldn’t work and we had to reinstall the original one we started the day with. David would have his work cut out for him because the steering had an extremely tight spot when trying to turn to the right past center, a pretty important thing to be able to do when coming off of the corner at speed. 

We only made a few laps during practice and we were about ninth on the speed chart. Not where we wanted to be going into a special race with extra winnings on the line and also a night of double features.

Qualifying

Picture Courtesy of Franklin Photography

Qualifying

Since we didn’t have a lot of time on the track we were forced to make some decisions to try to get more speed out of the car for qualifying. David,, Bob Moon and myself discussed some options and we made a few changes on the set-up and out David went for his qualifying lap. Evidently we made some good changes and David timed in third fastest, not bad especially since the steering box was not so good. After the invert and handicapping David would line up sixth for the start of the first race.

Race # 1

On the start of the first race David got hung up on the outside and did the smart thing lettomg some cars go until he found a spot to slide down in to, which ended up being ninth place. From there he patiently worked his way forward and by lap twenty five he was in fourth place. David and third place car had  a tight battle for position for several laps, but every time David tried to get under him, the door got shut. David  finished fourth in the first race.

 Race # 2

David started fourth in the second race and almost immediately on the start of the race he ended up in a battle with the same third place car from the first race. David was able to get underneath him and the two of them raced side by side for close to fifteen laps. As they came up on some lap traffic the two of them were forced to go three wide a couple of times, then just as they cleared a lap car going in to turn one, David and the other car made contact with each other and the two of them went sliding up the hill towards the wall. Both cars regained control and kept going, however a car about 7 spots back spun out and brought out the caution. The track officials decided David and the car he had contact with in turn one had to go to the rear of the field for the restart. By the time the restart came, the other car had dropped out of the race, David restarted eleventh and was quickly moving forward.  As he was making a pass on the outside, the car he was passing broke and slid up into David and spun him, making him back into the outside wall. This time there was substantial damage to the car. David pitted and we made some repairs and sent him back out.

Missing Some Parts

Picture Courtesy of Franklin Photography

Once he returned to the track some other problems came up. The car would not run right and he couldn’t get the car up to speed. We made a few more pit stops but we couldn’t get the car fixed and we were forced to drop out of the race. We ended with a tenth place finish in the second race. After the whole night was done we remain second in the points just eleven pionts back.