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

 

 

August 23, 2003

A Smashing success? - Click here to see qualifying and finishing order.

The Mad Cow team car repeated its previous poor qualifying efforts by qualifying 21st, deep into the 28 car field.

As the team expected, we started by quickly moving up in the race, passing those that seem to be able to qualify better than they race (as opposed to the Mad Cow team, which races better than they qualify).

Within a few laps we’d made it up to around 15th or so.  The car felt pretty good as the track had tightened up which took some of the looseness out of the car for the race.

Coming hard into turn 3 the radio blared something about a “wreck in three” but by the time we backed out we were headed right toward the 9-11 car of Rick Bowman who was parked sideways in 3 after a dustup with Kevin Yeatts in the lead pack.  Not knowing if it was safe to go high or low, we tried to just stop in time but ended up pretty much centerpunching the 9-11 car. Bowman finished the race in the pits as the tow truck had to drag him off the track. Neither driver was hurt, and we were sent to the rear, now a lap behind the rest of the cars.  Amazingly, we were able to continue with nothing more than a severely bent bumper that was rubbing on the right front tire and a destroyed oil cooler scoop.

Or so we thought.

We kept the car going, and even with a badly handling racer, managed to pass some other cars and finished the race right where we started- in 21st, a new low for us this year. After the race when we were checking the car, we found that the accident (or some rough work in 1, it’s hard to tell) broke part of the left front suspension. We are evaluating the steering box to see if it was damaged as well.

This race was a tough one for us. On the one hand, we didn’t spin, avoided every wreck but one and finished where we started.  On the other hand, we should have finished higher, probably in the low teens.

A smashing success? Perhaps- but the next few races will tell where we finish this year at ODS.

- Will Campbell