Click on the date below for that evening’s qualifying and finishing order.

 

 

November 30, 2003

 

Outside Invaders turn south, Freeze
(11/30/03)

Well, we tried to go to Wall Speedway as advertised. When our Car Specialist Bill Crisp called Wall to find out whether we could run radios or not there, it came out that in order to run on Saturday, we would have had to run on Friday as well.  We couldn't do that, so we set our sights on Southern National Speedway instead and headed to their Fall Classic. Besides, their flyer said they were going to pay $5,000 for second place. Alas, it was a typo.

Now, we figured that the weather was 80 on Friday in Kenly, and that SNS was around 8 hours south of NJ, so the weather would be pretty good, right?  I'm sure it was just fine if you were a penguin.  Every other mammal at the track froze.  Cooler than expected weather, overcast skies and unrelenting wind just made it miserable.  That, and the interminable wait to get to actually race.  But enough complaining: what about the race?

We ran well in practice, turning several 17.4x times, which would have put us up at the sharp end of the grid if we'd actually been able to qualify with those times.  But, of course, the Mad Cow car always seems to race better than it qualifies, and this race meeting was no exception.  We did, however, qualify with a lower time than we'd had for the Nationals a few weeks ago, with a 17.64 (compared to our Nats qualifying effort which yielded a 17.71). This put us 14th in a 23-car field.  Not great, but an OK start.

When the 25-lap Legends race finally started a full 9 hours after our qualifying started, we lined up on the back stretch to take the green.  On pole was Craig Goess Jr., the 2003 National Pro Champ, with Chase Scott, Max Smith, Ryan Crites and a few other luminaries close behind. The start was bunched with the Mad Cow racer taking hits from the rear (and hitting the car in front).  Almost immediately, Keven Wood (2003 National Semi-pro champ) and Cameron Patrick collided and went to the back.  In the melee of the first lap, we moved up 3 or 4 positions and began to tussle with the 10 car, which was slower than us but apparently much wider. Taking a very defensive line, he blocked for a while but we finally passed to move into 8th place. We stayed in 8th for most of the race, trying to catch up to the leader group, eventually putting our fastest race times down in the 17.3 range. Near the end of the race we came under attack from Cameron Patrick, who with Keven Wood were slicing through the field after their incident. After getting rammed several times, we went high out of 2 and let Patrick by, finishing in 9th overall and first in the Masters division. Other local drivers included Mike Collier who is having a great year running the 0 car when it's regular driver isn't available. Mike, in his first year of racing, has demonstrated that even if you never actually drove a race car, hanging around them all your life doesn't hurt!  And JD Trenary qualified well but spun early and never made it into the top 10.

All in all, a pretty good end, except for the cold. Next year we will be back in force, possibly with a second team car for Anthony, and with a few surprises up our sleeves!

Look for us in 2004!

Will Campbell