It’s something I’ve always wanted to do…Race the Oxford 250. Mission accomplished, although it would have been nice to have a little more luck on our side. Saturday (practice day) was indeed a struggle, all day we worked ruthlessly on an ill-handling race car which seemed to have a mind of it’s own. We had the front end hooked up well, but a serious lack of rear bite left us scratching our heads time and time again.
To make matters worse I lost power steering, or so I thought, we changed the pump but still had problems. The problem ended up being in the steering rack so we put a new one on and went back out. Valuable practice time was missed though. The crew worked frantically the rest of the day but very little gains were made. If there were some kind of a “Hard Workers Of The Weekend” award my Dad, Jeff Wilson, Don Reinhart Jr., and both Grandfathers would’ve had it in their back pockets.
Race Day started off much better. My Dad drew the number 56 out of the hat for our heat line-up order. Dad pulled number 1 out of the hat for the 250 back in 1999, so it’s a tradition that he pulls my number for this race. The number 56 started us 6th in heat number 5, 20 cars where in my heat. During the heat the car started off strong, within 2 laps I drove my way up to 4th which is the last transferring spot out of the heats. Our car then began to get free on exit and it was getting pretty tough to drive, I had to “White Knuckle” it from that point forward. The mistake I made though was perhaps being a little too conservative, with one lap to go a hard charging car which started near the rear of the pack got on the outside of me and stole 4th pace away right at the line. I was mad, but with myself as there was nobody else to blame but me. Yeah, the car wasn’t great but I let it slip away by not being aggressive enough. Giving up 4th and finishing 5th put me in another 20 car heat race. This time I was on the pole with once again 4 cars transferring to the 250. This time when the green dropped there was no messing around. I took off like a bullet and ran hard every lap giving myself about a 10 car length lead, and it was a good thing I did because with 4 laps to go a tire went soft and I had to finess my vay to victory. It felt pretty good getting my first win of 09 in just my 2nd start but I knew in order to win the big one we still had a lot of work to do on the car.
The evening rolled around and it was time for the biggest Late Model race of the year, The TD Banknorth 250. Two hundred and fifty green flag laps that paid $100 per lap to lead, plus $25,000 to the winner. So if the stars lined up just right the winner could potentially take home $50,000. We stated 27th but when the green flag dropped so did we. I figure we must have slipped back to about 32nd but right away a problem arose. Once again a tire went soft and we fell way off the pace only 20 laps in. We needed a caution but it never came. Those guys from the North East race hard and clean so we were forced to make a green flag stop. The crew busted off a wicked stop, which they did for me all night, but a green flag stop on a short track will kill you every time, and we lost several laps. Once we had the tire problem solved we scratched and clawed our way though the pack but at this point it was only for experience and pride. It still felt good considering it was one of the toughest groups of cars I have ever ran against. Sometime in the middle of the race the yellow flag came out and everybody including myself checked up. Unfortunately the car behind me couldn’t get it slowed down on time and drove into my left rear tire sending it towards the outside of the track. It caused just enough damage to end our day, we came home with a 36th place finish. The whole team as well as myself kept our heads up high though because we knew we qualified for the toughest short track race in America, a race where 40 very good Late Models were sent home, and we knew that it wasn’t our day, but our day will come soon!
