Saturday's race was really cool. I finally got to race the Sportsman car.

This car has really been a project. A few years ago I was calling on a potential sponsor and I saw it sitting in the back of his warehouse. The car had not been raced in over 7 years. It was the owner of the companies personal car and I guess he got involved in other things and no longer had time to race it. He was sort of interested in selling it so I suggested he let me race it and maybe someone would want to buy it while I was at the track. He wasn't real receptive to the idea at first but after working on him for a couple of years he finally gave in.

I went over and got the car last March and then we took it to the track to see what it would do. The first time out I could tell it really handled well but the motor needed some work. I must have driven about 30 laps and then all of a sudden the right front ball joint broke and the car went right up the track into the outside wall. When we got it back to the shop and looked it over the damage wasn't that bad but we did have a lot of maintenance to do to get the car in top running order. Plus, the rules had changed a lot in 7 years so there were several updates that I needed to do to get the car up to spec as well. After 4 month of working on the car I finally got it ready to go to the track.

Racing this car has sort of been my own thing. My dad told me I needed to get a crew together and find a trailer that I could tow behind my own truck so that I could handle everything myself and then he could get back to sitting in the stands and watching like he used to do before we started racing. Last week was actually my first attempt at racing the car but I had a little accident before I even got to the track! About a mile from the shop a chain broke and the car crashed into the back of my truck and fell off the trailer. The damage was minor but I destroyed the radiator so we headed back to the shop instead of going to the track.

This week things went a little better. Dad decided that maybe he could still drive the trailer for me and thought he would park the truck and run off to the stands. In practice I had trouble with the shifter linkage and then the gasket from the intake manifold blew out so he had to stick around and help me fix those things but he did get to watch all the races from the stands as planned. Still, I didn't get one good lap of practice and I wasn't sure that the manifold was fixed so I had no idea what would happen when I took the green flag.

Since this was my first time racing in this class I had to start dead last in 9th place. At the drop of the flag I jumped to the outside and started passing cars on the outside. At the end of the first lap I had already passed 3 cars and was up to 6th. I ran 5 more lap behind the 5th place car trying to see what I had to work with. The car would go where ever I needed it to go. The brakes were good and the motor was strong. I kept driving it in harder and harder while trying to get off the brakes sooner and sooner to let the car roll and the car seemed to handle better the harder I drove it.

About this time the leaders up front got into it and one of them spun the other around which brought out the caution. The car that spun had to be towed to the pits and the car that spun him went to the back so on the restart I was in 4th. In 3 laps I was in 3rd and in 2 more laps I was in 2nd. On the next lap I was door to door with the leader going under the flag stand and on the next time around I was in the lead!

I held the point for 4 more laps and then the car that had been sent to the rear, who is the points leader and who also usually wins every week, got to my back bumper. He got under me going down the front stretch and passed me going into turn one. The car behind him tried to drive it in behind him to get by me too but he drove it in too hard and spun himself out. That brought out the yellow again with just 2 laps to go. On the restart I was afraid to start in 3rd gear because of the problems I had with the linkage before so I decided to try to start in 4th. The leader brought us around real slow, too slow to start in 4th, so I didn't get a real good start. Once I got going, I drove the car for everything I could get out of it but I didn't have enough laps to get back to him and make a pass to regain the lead so I finished the race in 2nd.

One of the things my crew chief always does for me on the late model is fill the gas tank and set the tires pressures before the race. At the last minute before I went out to start the race I did remembered to set the tire pressures but I forgot to top off the fuel in the tank. After the race the top 3 cars always have to go across the scales and when they weighed my car I came up 10 lbs light! I doubt that 10 lbs one way or the other would have anything to do with where I finish a race but they still DQ'ed me so I didn't get to collect any money.

When I got the car it had the number 7 on it and I was planning on changing it to #27 but I wanted to see if this car was competitive first. With all the troubles we have had with the late model this year, and the struggle I had getting this Sportsman car ready, I just thought this race was the first glimpse of my luck starting to change so I have decided not to change the number and have named the car "Lucky 7".

I've got 3 Sportsman races in a row at New Smyrna Speedway over the next 3 weeks ending in a 50 lap features on August 23rd so we'll see if I can keep my good luck going!