Well, opening night happened. Actually, I guess practice did too but I’ve forgotten to post anything about either until now.

Practice went pretty well. The car ran a little hot but otherwise everything went smoothly. I didn’t get a good feel for how competitive it would be but it felt solid and smooth and I did get to run down a few cars. Of course I also got run down by a few in turn. but since everyone was on different tires, I figured I was doing OK. The important thing was that it stayed together and there didn’t seem to be any serious issues. After practice I picked up a couple of sets of tires for me and Jason and headed home and during the week I worked on lettering and getting the Big 10 tires mounted up. Unfortunately, neither went all that well. One of the tires had a hole in it that I plugged to get the car set up. And we messed up one of the pieces of vinyl and ended up putting it off and just making some numbers.

Friday I got to the track reasonably early and got everything all set up only to find that there were no tires. I guess this was a big issue for a lot of people. Supposedly the Big 10 guys are working on a solution but it was certainly a problem this week. Billy Gleason was kind enough to offer me a right front for the night, but eventually the tires did show up and I was able to get one swapped, mounted, and on the car for practice.

Again, the car felt good. I wasn’t blindingly fast but I was within a second or less of the regulars. I ran pretty even with Gleason and Strusz, and chased down Vogler, but Jason and Wright were a little faster, and Steffenhagen was in another class. Unfortunately, the car started running hot again. We tried a few things during hot laps and seemed to be getting somewhere before the heat.

I started 5th in the heat and managed to dodge a mess on lap one to jump to second. A few laps later Jason gave me a little nudge coming out of 4 to get by on the inside and we started chasing down the leader. But with 3 to go the motor started breaking up and by the last lap I was back to 5th and barely held that for the checkers. The car only made it to turn three before it died on the track and had to be pushed into the pits. We did some testing and eventually found a bad coil. Blue from Willie’s crew was nice enough to lend us one and we got it fired for the feature.

Due to my disappointing heat finish, I started 15th in the feature. We took the green and ran one lap before someone did something stupid up front and caused a pileup in three and four. I missed it and picked up five spots or so and was looking forward to a decent race when I looked down at the gauges and saw that the temp was at 230 again. I waited to see if it would drop any and it kept going up. So I pulled it in and called it a night. Considering that the difference in payout between fifth and last is exactly $0, and that there was so much carnage that only 6 cars finished, I figure it was a good choice.

I’ve been working on the cooling all week and after a lot of research and contemplation, I think I’ve got it figured out. Of course I’m throwing so many things at it that it might be too cool now but I can fix that. I also picked up a set of tires so I’ll be on a close to level playing field for the start of the regular Spencer season. Now I just need to get through tech…