Team CRC gets into "The Big One"

Friday, 04 June 2010 14:05 administrator

big-one-rotator

You won't find a better living representation of that then this week !

After last weeks aborted attempt at racing, we went into this weekend with cars which for the most part were race ready.

Race night at the shop on WED was abbreviated and mostly focused on getting cars trimmed for Mt. Pleasant. You can check out the Jenkins Performance Motorsports Blog : http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jenkins-Performance-Motorsports/123521082724?v=app_2347471856&ref=ts for details from the JPM side of the fence.

#13 Cat's Parts Mart Ford Taurus at Angola Motor Speedway preparing for the Stan Perry Memorial

Thursday, I took the #13 Cat's Parts Mart Ford Taurus to Angola. Along with associate team mates Randy Clingan and Craig Frase, we were going bounty hunting. Randy drives the wicked fast 11x Micheals Auto Salvage Honda Prelude... while Craig sports the nasty quick #50 VW Sciricco of Fried Chicken Motorsports. We were heading down to Angola Motor Speedway to take part in the FWD Run What You Brung portion of the Stan Perry Memorial event taking place.

Angola Race Action... #13 McNamara, #50 Frase, #11x Clingan

Things looked up at the beginning.. as Randy and Craig were first and second on the speed chart in practice. Me, not so much. The SHO badly missed the rear sway bar and simply wouldn't turn. It was horrible and not a factor for the rest of the day. In qualifying, Craig found some more speed and would set the track record at 17.3 Randy put the wrong gear in the car (my bad advice) and was only turning 6000 rpms on a car which will turn 8000+ he was second quick at 17.7, but was generally unhappy. Because of the low car count, our heats got scrapped.. and we just went feature racing. Also making the trip to Angola was Bill McBride.. that was it for the local cars. I guess the other "bad fast" cars of Michigan, Indiana and Ohio were too chicken to make the run.

Randy and Craig started on the tail and got up to 4th and 5th before lady luck struck. Randy's computer didn't like something and threw a limp code at him, which sapped him of all go power and he pulled it in with the motor barely running. Craig dropped out 1 lap later when he lost oil pressure. An early race incident had damaged his oil cooler and he was losing the life blood of his motor and couldn't risk any further damage. I got black flagged for smoking brakes. We finished last, next to last, 3rd last. The Ugly Truth. Bill did pretty good, finished 8th. Congrats to Mark Mason who won the race. Mark and I talked a bit of smack leading up to the race and on race day... but it was all in good fun.

Friday we were worried about the weather... it threatened rain, it even rained on the west side with a couple of tracks raining out, but hardly a drop in mt. pleasant and nothing during the races. We loaded up and got to MPS about 7:15pm... little bit earlier then usual, but because of the double features, we needed to be there a little bit earlier. Evidently, the clocks at MPS don't work, because features had already started and we ended up missing the start of our make up race. On top of that, they didn't reserve our pit stalls - again -. I thought Rob was going to come unglued. I was pretty pissed off myself. I found Bill and got a non-answer, then went looking for Mario and got another non-answer. I left with the truck and trailer still attached, went over to the grandstand side and found Betty who actually took the time to listen to me and come up with a solution. It was a difficult situation and the solution isn't the best, but at least she listened.

Mike Schnettler's motor officially gives up

With Winston and Cherry raining out, there were a lot of Late Models and Mods there. That gave us a long break before we went racing again, so I went through the pits and checked a few things out. I found Mike Schnettler at his pit looking at what was a very strong 2.3 motor, but which now appeared to be some kind of straining device. You can check out the photo over there on the right, that's a little bit more damage then you can fix with JB Weld and Duct Tape. I also got the chance to meet Bruce Fidler, Jordan & Jacob Bailey and their father John Bailey. John is well known in the racing world, as the owner of Bailey Excavating, he has been involved in racing back into the 80's... sponsoring JD McDuffie's Winston Cup car at one point and having been involved in NASCAR at various levels and with various drivers. Jacob had a mod he was racing for the first time at MPS, while Jordan had a stock-4 (FWD) and was racing with us.

Race time I was pretty charged up.. it showed to. I took the #99 Cats-Parts-Mart Ford Focus to the front and stayed there for the heat win. Randy got his #57 Okemos Auto Repair/Jets Pizza Dodge Neon up to 2nd, but then he broke one of the RR control arms and fell back to fourth. Tim finished 5th, running a conservative race and wanting to get the #42 Hotjackets.com/Stateside Deli Dodge Stratus to the feature without incident. Cam and the #00 O'Neils Auto Repair Dodge Neon suffered an apparent transmission failure. He finished the race, but he said the car would not go. Further inspection confirmed that. He wasn't happy that a problem we suspected for a couple of weeks killed his racing weekend, but he's slowly learning that racing is a tough proposition and things don't always go your way.

I need to send out special thanks to Tom Dusen, driver of the #10 Late Model. Tom was making the visit to MPS from Crystal Motor Speedway (where he is 5th in points) and he gave us a hand on getting Randy's car fixed. A welder by trade, Tom crawled under our car and using his welder fixed us up.

McNamara and Rodgers on way to a 1-2 finish

THANK YOU !! Also need to thank Rusty Schlenk who loaned us the steel pipe we used.

In the feature, I started 5th, they have decided that is how they are going to do it for now on... its going to be an invert of 50% of the field, based on how you finish in the heat. It took a couple of laps to get to the front, but once there, it was Team CRC/Jenkins Performance Motorsports putting a hurting on the field. We went 1-2-3 in a close battle between the three of us, but with a sizable distance back to 4th.

Saturday we put brakes on the #99 and took it to Owosso Speedway. Because Cam's tranny was on the blink, he stayed home. We loaded up Randy's car and headed to the track. We didn't have a real good qualifying effort... I spun on my lap and Randy tippy-toed through his. The track was very greasy and slippery. Joey in his #69 went the fastest, turning a 20.556; Randy Kretzinger 20.640; Scott Rodgers 20.936; Patrick McNamara 20.943

The heat race was kind of a nightmare... first off, we all ended up in the same heat. I hate when that happens. Secondly, we were all bunched up together... and sure enough, we had some contact between team mates. On the first lap, Randy gave me a little punch coming out of 3 as we were getting ready to take the green. I had an improvised battery connection due to damage suffered the night before and the hit knocked it loose, which caused the motor to miss, Randy moved high and Scott came in and knocked me a 2nd time and the connector came completely off... end of my heat race. So then on the 3rd lap, Joey got a big run down the front stretch and made a move to the inside to pass the #24 of Amber Slagle and then attempted a slide job pass Randy.. but he wasn't quite far enough up the track and hit Randy square on the tire.. RF to LF.. the contact broke the RF spindle on the #69, causing him to go even harder to the right and push Randy way out off the backstretch and into the weeks and dirt. Yellow out.. #69's night over and the #57 damaged beyond track repair. Scott went on to finish 3rd, the only bright spot of the heat.

Between the heat and the feature, I replaced the battery connectors and got the car ready for the race.. we adjusted the toe on Randy's car as much as we could. Timmy volunteered to give up his #42 to Joey, Joey is running for points.

Feature time.. I started 10th on the grid.. I got a great run on the Green.. took it to the outside and lost it and put it into the wall hard. I'm not going to go into the he did this, she did that, it was Racer X's fault.. it was the first lap of a 20 lap race, I had a bad fast race car and it was a stupid decision to go where I did. I don't blame anyone but myself. There are 3 different videos of the wreck and the lead up to the wreck online, you can watch them and make your own mind up.

Right Side damage to the #99 after heavy contact with the wall on Saturday Night at Owosso Speedway

Speedway Safety did a wonderful job getting me out of the car. I didn't lose consciousness, but I hurt my right shoulder pretty bad and I couldn't get out myself. Special thanks to Ryan Schilling.

Extra Special Thanks to my teammates and friends and extended family Rob and Shannon Jenkins, Bruce and Sue Fickies. Shannon rounded up my son Nik, who is only 12 and was watching his old man get extracted from a race car and was understandably shook up. Rob came down and gave me a familiar face to see. He rode with me to the hospital and made that situation as good as it was going to be. Also a special THANK YOU to my wife Shawnie. I had to call her from the ambulance and tell her what happen and try not to worry her to death. She took the news well, but I know she was pretty panicked. I also want to say sorry to Jeff Parish.. I'm quite sure I stole a year of his life.

Randy went on to finish 10th, Joey 9th and Scott 11th. Obviously, we didn't do any Sunday Racing.

It was a scary deal, all my safety equipment did was it was suppose to do. Considering how hard I hit the wall, I'm lucky I'm not hurt worse. I'm also glad that no one else got caught up in it.

I would thank everyone who called or wrote, but that would take hours, as I heard from everyone.. so just let me say one big general THANK YOU... you all know who you are.

I'll be back as quickly as I can.. I have a sub driver lined up so we won't lose our spot in points at MPS and I'm going to spend my time off really focusing on getting Cameron's car up to speed. He's ready to start winning some races !!

The Highs are High... the Lows are Low.