And We're Off! - - - Sort of . . .

 


The much delayed, cancelled, rescheduled etc race season for the USMTS Modifieds finally saw some cars on the track last night.  We're at RPM Speedway in Crandall TX for 2 nights of racing.  


The Thursday practice session was cancelled due to wet grounds, which are a disaster for heavy car haulers.  When racers arrived yesterday (Friday) they were clustered outside the facility while final work was done by heavy equipment in the pits trying to dry the surface.  Then once allowed to enter, the pits filled quickly, so our rig and lots of others ended up parking in the spectator parking areas.  In this particular case, "High and Dry" is a really good thing!



Then the spectators arrive and quickly FILL the remaining grounds, with the later arrivals parking offsite and walking to the track.  Needless to say, it was a total cluster with race cars trying to get to their races thru lines of cars looking for parking.

USMTS modified entries totaled 71, while the remaining 5 classes of modifieds, stock cars and dwarfs add another 129, for a total of exactly 200 cars for the event.  As for the Skyberg team - we started and finished in the 9th position in our Heat race (one of 6 heats), then in the second of three B-Mains we lined up near the back in 14th.  Casey did good to get the car up to 7th by the finish, on a basically one-lane track down low, and relatively little passing action.  Being out of the transfer spots (first 4 cars) we thus did not make the event.  We're done for the night but will try again Saturday.  Looking forward to a better racing venue, however.

BTW:  Terry Phillips, a long time racer from Springfield MO started 2nd in the Main and went on to win the thing and pocket $10,000 for doing so.  I suspect he really likes this place!  Oh well.

More from Crandall after tonight!

D & L


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