Four Mustangs departed from the Spira race shop to three different tracks with Scott heading south to Flamboro, Samantha and Jake to Sunset and Billy went north to Sauble Speedway’s opening night of racing with his brother Rick, who had his #72 pink and black Mustang fresh from representing Spira Racing at the front door of the Italian Canadian Club in Guelph for the annual women’s cancer awareness event, “Hope and the City”.
Sunset Speedway: Jake and Samantha were in separate heat races with Jake starting 5th in his. Jake fell back two positions and then regained one to finish 6th. Samantha started 8th in her heat race and after multiple cautions, finished 3rd. Jake entered the B-Main where he started 5th out of 17 cars and despite challenging for the lead on lap 8, got tied up with some lapped traffic and finished 5th. Sam would run in the Dash for Cash, where she had a 5th place finish in the caution free race.
Jake started 3rd with Samantha 12th for the 25 lap feature with 30 cars vying for a win and it only took four laps for the front runners to run into lapped traffic, where Jake fell to 6th and Samantha moved up to 11th. Jake remained in the top ten in 7th as they reached the half way point and Sam also broke into the top ten as she was running in 9th. As the cars hit the five to go signal, both Sam and Jake found themselves in three and four wide battles with lapped cars throughout the final laps where Sam would finish 8th and Jake 9th.
Flamboro Speedway: Scott was the lone Spira car to attend and after making a sway bar adjustment during practice to cure a push condition, lined up to start 3rd in his heat race. The top three cars pulled away from the field with Scott hot in pursuit in 4th, were he finished behind the #13, 71 and 37. Scott lined up for the feature in 8th and was running 4th with two laps remaining when he caught the #71, however could not get by on the final lap. Despite having a very good handling car, Scott finished 4th as the #50 pulled away from the field with a half track lead, in the caution free feature, followed by the #13 and #71 to round out the top three.
Sauble Speedway: Billy and his brother Rick both adjusted for a push condition throughout the four practice sessions and Billy was runny pretty good lap times, however was lacking horse power compared to two or three of the faster cars as they would pull away down the straightaways. Billy lined up the #86 to start 4th in the first of two heat races and moved up to finish 2nd. The second heat race consisted of the top three cars of the 1st and 2nd heat, putting all the faster cars in the same race to set the final starting order for the 30 lap feature. Billy started 4th and with some pretty strong competition, not many positions were exchanged throughout the 10 laps and he would finish 4th.
Despite the extremely cold temperature, a good size crowd was on hand and the track did a great job in moving the event along quickly. Billy started 9th in the feature event and started to go backwards until the first caution for his brother Rick who was turned by the #7. Despite being able to get into the position to make a pass on most cars that Billy encountered, the obvious lack of power made it difficult to complete the pass for position as the front runners moved ahead of the field. Billy did manage to work his way up to 4th where he finished behind the #36, #1 and #17, and Rick finished 9th in his maiden voyage at the track and of the season in his Hope and the City machine. With two seasons on the motor, it was decided to remove it the following day and investigate to see if there is a problem and see what they can find to get Billy up to the front of the pack as he was the previous year.
Next up for the Spira Team will have Scott return to Flamboro, where the pits open at 3, the main gates at 5 and racing starts at 6:00pm. Billy, Jake and Samantha will head to Sunset speedway where the pits open at 1:00 and racing begins at 6:00pm.
