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To Da Front with Mitch - 7/8/17

It has been a crazy few weeks at headquarters with everything from the car to the trailer needing service, as well as some personal items.  We ran the New England Short Track Showdown at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and the Busch North Throwback event at Thompson since our last release.

We ended up missing first round of practice at the one mile oval, and this proved to be a little painful as we needed to test out our mechanical setup we brought to the event. (Right: Tachneedle Photo).  After a few laps in round 2 we knew we needed to perform a transmission swap in order to get a more appropriate gear ratio.  Big thanks to our pit neighbor Jeremy Carter for all his help during the process.

With pops up in the tower spotting, Christine really stepped up to the plate with helping setup the car and doing other odds and ends. Starting pole in the heat race with the new transmission we really had no idea what to expect, and it showed as we tanked to the rear fairly quickly, partly due to not having enough track time. But it proved to be a good photo-op (hot rod magazine photo).

We started deep in the field for the feature event, and was running a very fun and decent race somewhere in the 20-30th place range fighting hard for positions, when 12 laps in the car backfired coming out of turn 2.  Slowing to a stop on pit road looking for the crew, one or two stalls away from the pit box, a fire blasted out the front and back of the motor ending our day, and luckily ruined nothing else major and everyone involved was safe.  We ended up officially scored 33rd.

So now here we were a week out from Thompson's K&N event, with our built race motor blown to bits.  Granted some of it appears to be salvageable, a week was not enough time to assess the damage and rely on a quick rebuild.  We immediately went to the shop and worked hard all week to take a spare motor out of our parts car and put it in the racer.  This motor had 246k miles on it, and pretty much half the power of our race 

motor.  We were literally bringing a knife to a gunfight with the sole purpose to take the green flag at Thompson for our point run this season.  Whatever it takes.

Turns out, we did much better than expectations.  Yes the car was very slow in comparison, yes we didn't stand a chance out there.  But attrition worked out in our favor as the competition basically dropped out.  We lost a full second plus some on our lap times compared to the old motor, and it showed on the long run that put us so far behind.  A green white checkered gave us renewed hope for a better finish bunching us up once again, but the tired motor couldn't pull off any miracles and we crossed the line 10th.

We will be doing something different for our next trip to Thompson, as the Single Cam engine was only to get by for this one event.  However we are debating taking it to Waterford this week solely out of curiosity on what it will do at a track that doesn't require as much motor as it does handling.  Our plan for the rest of the season is to finish the Thompson schedule, and make whatever decisions based outside of that.

We also ran the Waterford opener prior to NHMS, where we experienced electrical issues submitting us to an 11th place finish.

The Saturn operation is now available for $2000 turn key, and that's with every part we have in the shop.

Link to RaceDayCT.com Article for NHMS

Link to On Board at NHMS 7/1/17

Link to YankeeRacer's Video @ 8:10 mark

Link to On Board at Thompson 7/8/17

Link to On Board at Waterford 6/24/17

**Andover Used Auto Parts, Biggins’ Auto Repair, So Sorry, Lucky Strike Lanes, Thirty Marketing. **

Mitch Bombard, driver of the #10CT Enduro, NEMST Car, Mini Stock,  is the writer of the weekly recaps, and expresses the views of his own from his viewpoint behind the wheel, and after watching video (if available).

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