I said this last week, and I hope I don't say this every week, but if you have to have bad luck I'd rather have it at the beginning of the year than at the end.

Last night, right off the bat the car wouldn't run past the flag stand. It just sounded like it shut off. It felt like it was running out of gas or something. I put the air cleaner on at the shop and I guess I tightened it down too tight so it was blocking the air from getting into the carburetor. That caused one of the plugs to foul so we went around the track to see if someone had a back up set they would sell us. At first we felt embarrassed that we didn't have an extra set but can you believe that no one had an extra set of plugs? Oh, well!

We cleaned the plugs as best we could and I got the track to let me take a quick practice run and it seemed that the problem had cleared up... (more)

This week we actually got to run a heat race. Because I finished last last week, this week I was on the pole. I got a good start and I lead the first lap but my engine started to sputter again and on the second lap 2 fast cars passed on the outside going down the front stretch. Coming off turn 2 the motor just died and the car behind me swerved to the inside to avoid hitting me. By the time we got to turn 3 he was all messed up on his entry and got down on the apron and spun the car. I was 3rd on the restart but once again the car wouldn't go so the leaders pulled away from me. I did the best I could with what I had and was able to hold onto my position to finish the heat in 3rd.

For some reason they put me back on the pole for the feature. I was concerned about the motor sputtering again so my plan was to try to race if the car would go but pull in if it didn't. That way at least I would get last place points. Turned out the car ran like it was supposed to and I got a real good start.

Going down the back stretch on the first lap a faster car go to my inside and my spotter let me know I had a car on my inside just as I went into turn 3. Now, my spotter tends to tell me "inside" a little early and often the car is barely at my rear bumper. I looked in my side mirror and didn't see anything so I turned into the corner as I would if no one was there. Turned out the car was black and had no headlight decals or stickers on the hood so, at a glance, it didn't look like there was anybody there. Sure enough he kept his nose right at my right rear wheel and I spun in the middle of turns 3 and 4. While I was sideways the same car hit me again and turned me back in the right direction so I grabbed 3rd gear and got it going again crossing the finish line at the end of the first lap in 5th.

Because I was able to keep going, they left the green out but then the yellow flag came out for another car who had spuin behind me trying to keep from hitting me while I was spinning. I would think that they would have thrown the caution and restarted the race since we hadn't completed a lap yet at the time of the spins but they treated it as 2 separate incidents. On the restart, they left me in 5th and put the car that spun on purpose to avoid hitting me to rear of the field for bringing out the caution! So much for starting on the pole!

Funning thing was, the car was running pretty good. The bad thing was that the cars in front of me were sort of running all over the track and I couldn't figure out how to set them up to make a pass. I started to go a little high on one car so I could pull under him coming off the corned and, all of a sudden, he slid up the track right in front of me. I had to turn further up the track and get hard into the brakes to avoid him and that allowed the last place car to get under me and take away my position.

The rest of the race I just worked on getting to them at the right time so I could go high or low to get around them but they never ran 2 laps the same and sometimes they would seem to just stop in the corner right in front of me. It was only a 15 lap race which was probably a good thing because with 3 laps to go my motor started cutting out again ending any chance I had of making up one or more position.

So, once again, I finished the race in last place but this time I did finish! Now, this week we have to do a little body work and get a new MSD box and see if that fixes the motor problem. Maybe next week things will start to turn around for me. I'll be sure and let you know how things turn out!