Spira Racing Update From May 31, 2014

Plenty of sunshine was forecast for the weekend as the teams rolled out of the shop as Scott headed to Flamboro Speedway and Billy, Jake and Samantha headed north to Sunset Speedway. It would be the first of two races on the weekend for Billy and Jake as they also planned on attending the Mini Stock Nationals at Kawartha Speedway that was apart of the OSCAAR Summer Rush Super Late Model event the following day.

Flamboro: Scott had the car handling very well throughout the practice sessions and did not require any adjustments. Starting his first of two heat races in fourth, he was unable to get down to the lower lane that he wanted to use to go forward and ran the entire ten laps to finish in the same position. In his second heat race, Scott started 3rd, however got shuffled back to 5th and just ran out of laps to regain any positions once he got into a lane that he could go forward.

In the feature, Scott started 10th and quickly got shuffled back to 16th as he was stuck in a lane that was going backwards. After running 17 green flag laps, Scott found the room to move forward and made his way up through the field and into 3rd for a restart after the #13 spun the #71 and they both went to the back under caution. Scott restarted behind the #36 and was able to get on the inside of the leader coming off of turn two and moved into the lead. The #50 car was on Scotts tail as the laps wound down and despite the #50 making contact with the back of Scotts car, Scott was able to hold on and pull off his first feature win of the season and his career.

Sunset: Twenty eight cars arrived for the regular points night of racing with Jake, Billy and Samantha.
Billy fought a carburetor issue all night long as Samantha dealt with a loose condition during practice and Jake was relatively happy with the handling of his car.

Samantha started 7th in the first heat race and quickly moved up to finish 3rd as Jake and Billy were in the same heat where Jake started 7th, just behind Billy in 6th. Billy’s car was handling well and despite the carburetor not functioning properly, won the heat race with Jake finishing 4th, putting all three cars into the 10 lap Dash for Cash race. With the #64 jumping the start of the race, the flag man did not through the green flag and the field checked up in various stages that caused Samantha to make solid contact with the car in front of her causing considerable damage, however she remained on the track. Billy lined up 2nd and would finish 2nd, Samantha started 7th and finished 6th and Jake started 11th and finished 11th.

As the cars lined up on the front stretch, Samantha’s car was getting the front bumper welded after pulling off the damaged nose and Billy’s car would not start as it looked like the carburetor bug may have shut him down for the night. Billy was pushed onto the track, where the car was bump started and a spot was left open for Sam as they parked on the front stretch where they were joined with kids from the stands that stood beside each driver carrying a frisbee with the numbers 1-18 on them. The frisbees would be turned over randomly to determine the starting order at the front of the feature. The numbers did not work out so well for the Lucas Oil Team as Samantha would start 15th, Jake 16th and Billy 17th. Requiring another bump start on the track to get the #86 running, Billy did not have a good feeling about how the motor was going to run under race conditions as Samantha joined the field with he car repaired, less the nose and hood that remained in the pit area. At the half way point, Samantha had gained eight positions as she ran in 7th with Billy behind her in 8th and Jake was positioned in 14th. Samantha gained one more position throughout the final laps as Billy remained 8th to finish in that position and Jake gained two positions to finish 12th.

The team returned to the shop where the carburetor was changed in the #86 as well as the rear end gears were replaced in both the #86 and #88 cars as both Billy and Jake would head to Kawartha Speedway at 7:00am.

Next up for the Spira Team will see Billy and Jake head to Kawartha Speedway on Sunday June1st for the Mini-Stock Nationals where racing begins at 2:30pm.