2003 News

April 12th & 13th, 2003

After a cold long winter it was finally here, The Icebreaker.... Things started out great after a 4 hour rain delay, we practiced fast & qualified well. Started 5th in the heat race & battled hard to finish 3rd. This gave us the 7th starting spot in the first of two features for the weekend. Feature one was a clean race, went green to checker with no cautions, John managed to get from 7th to 5th before time ran out. Not a bad way to start the season with a top 5 finish. Then came day 2 & feature 2, Started 5th by re-draw, traffic was a mess for the first few laps as no one would get in line forcing John to hold back any kind of charge for position. Then things got wild as an unscrewed idiot tried a three wide move coming out of turn 2 which sent John sideways & nose first into the backstretch wall, a moderate hit but then after 90% of the field went by along came a Sunday driver who never saw John sitting sideways & never saw the caution. The hit was horrific a T-bone hit to the right side of the car. The damage was extensive & required extra effort just to load the car back in the trailer. The rear clip of the car was rammed over to the left about 2 feet and the center X bar was tweaked.

That chassis is being stripped for parts & put aside for a while and the team is now feverishly preparing a 2003 BFR chassis which had been planned to be brought out in the 2004 season, for opening night on June 5th. 

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June 5, 2003

RAINED OUT

June 12, 2003

The bad luck started early but it was off the track, on the way to pick up the car & trailer we lost a fuel pump in the tow rig. We spent a couple hours swapping into the other trailer & tow vehicle and then headed out for the track. The weather was pretty bleak looking & the forecast was for lots of rain. Somehow mother nature spared Thompson Speedway from the rain though for just enough time to get the show in. We practiced well & were pretty happy with the car. We started 8th in the heat and managed to finish 5th after breaking through heavy traffic. This started us 9th in the feature. Things went bad early in the feature on the first lap several cars went sliding & scattering down the front stretch into turn 1 but SURPRISE we made it through with one small dent in the right side door. The race restarted & we were on our way.... We chased down the others one by one & ran out of time with a 3rd place finish.

Photos to be posted later

June 19, 2003

Finished 6th tonight, car was pretty good but time ran short.

June 26, 2003

Tonight was the 75 lap Late Model race and it was sponsored by Smith Cast Iron Boilers. With over 100 guests of Smith Boilers on hand we worked our hardest to have a good run tonight. We started about mid pack & worked our way up slowly until we got a flat tire, luckily the caution came out for another incident & we made it to the pits for a tire change without losing a lap under green. We then worked our way back & wound up with a 5th place finish.

July 3, 2003

Wrecked on the first lap, someone up in the front of the pack spun coming out of turn 2 & caused a mad scramble & we wound up pushed right into the middle of it. finish was counted as 30th

July 12, 2003

#1 finally we beat the monkey off our back & came from 9th to win our first race in 2 years. Special thanks to the crew, & BFR chassis for all the repairs from the previous weeks wreck.

July 16, 2003

The car was pretty good in practice & real good in the qualifying heat but a decision to make adjustments for changing track conditions was our downfall, a short while before the feature started the weather turned warm & muggy after an afternoon of moderate temperature. A track that usually tightens up at night wouldn't do so with this unpredicted weather change and we wound upa bit off the mark with our chassis set-up & basically just hung on to the car to finish 10th.

July 24, 2003

We struggled a little in practice but got the car to where we thought it was pretty good for the heat. We started 8th in the heat & finished 8th, the car wasn't to the liking of our driver. Adjustments were made for the feature & we started 13th. In the first few laps the car was really loose coming out of the turn & John couldn't gain any ground. The caution flew early & Jimmy called him in for an adjustment. The adjustment made the car much better & John was on his way storming from the back, making 3 wide passes, & getting closer to the front every lap. On lap 21, John started working on the 6th place car of Woody Pitkat and got underneath him going into turn 3, the two drivers both tough competitors but friends off the track unfortunately came together in the middle of 3 & 4 and Johns right front tire went down sending him sliding up  into Woody & then taking the both of them into the wall. Woody suffered major damage but John was able to come in for a new right front & went back out. With only 3 laps to go John could only manage to get the car into 13th before the checker flew. Our team has offered Woody Pitkat the use of our back-up car in the event his car cannot be repaired in time for next weeks race. The incident that occurred on the track was unfortunate & a result of hard racing... This team wants everyone to know that there was no malicious intent by either driver to cause this wreck.

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