| August 30,2008 - London, Ontario
The Labour Day weekend event at Delaware Speedway turned out
to be a laborious affair for all the crew on the #82
team. The hauler left with the team at 4:00 on Friday afternoon for the 7 hour tow to London, Ontario -
unfortunately when the team hit Trenton the turbo blew on
the teams FORD F350 Super Duty and left them stranded around
7:00 pm. The team managed to limp the truck and
trailer into the ERB trucking yard outside Trenton.
The ERB Trucking company not only sponsors the teams good
friend and competitor Scott Steckly they are a major
transporter for Schneiders Foods.
The staff at the depot welcomed
to the team with open arms, offering their mechanics to help
with diagnosis, their shop, and shower facilities.
Another truck and trailer driven by OSS competitor Al Lebert
was organized out of London and the team off-loaded the
racecar and all the pit equipment into the ERB shop
area. The truck was towed back to Ottawa and the
trailer left at the ERB yard to be picked up next week.
At around 2:00 a.m. Al
arrived and the team loaded up the trailer and headed back
on their journey for London - 6:00 a.m. the team arrived in
London and managed to find the last room in London and sneak
2 hours of sleep before heading out to
Delaware Speedway to participate in the GREAT CANADIAN RACE
WEEKEND.
The car was quick off the
trailer and Dave practiced in the 20.20's - the team started
to make adjustments to make the car quicker and it continued
to get worse. The team had opted to try and run a
lighter fuel load as one method to try and pick up speed -
Dave had been starting each race with a full fuel load which
adds an additional 100lbs over the minimum weight of the
cars. In qualifying the car was extremely tight and
Dave could only manage a 20.7 putting him in the 13th spot
out of the 19 cars. "It was terrible - absolutely
terrible" said Dave "we're going to try a
different set of tires for the race - we'll have to start
last but we have to try and fix this problem - we're hoping
it's a stagger issue (the difference in size between the
right and left side tires).
The field roared to
the green and Dave started to feel out the car - on lap 10
the first caution flew and Dave brought the car to pit road
to make some more adjustments. Away the field went and
Dave started to move up through the field but on lap 25 the
throttle hung wide open going into turn 3 "I almost
wrecked the car - I lifted and the car just kept going, I
managed to pull back on the gas pedal with my toe - I ran
around like that for another 15 laps but then we had a weird
vibration in the front end - I thought the motor was blowing
up actually - and I brought it into the pits again to make
sure everything was o.k. and at least get the throttle
fixed" The repairs were made and another
adjustment made to the car and Dave headed out 4 laps down
to try and get the car better for the next race.
The team
quickly took the car to the tech shed to take advantage of
the scales there to find out why the car was not working the
way it should. Ride heights were double checked, cross
weights, corner weights, left side weight and finally rear
percentages were taken. The rear weight percentage had
dropped enough with the lack of fuel that it was a concern -
14 gallons of fuel was put in the car to top it off and get
the rear weight back in the car.
The second 50
Dave lined up 14th as the cars roared into turn 1 on the
opening lap. The car was a lot better but on lap
2 the power steering pump quit - "it was like driving a
tank - it handled well but it was everything I could muster
to steer the dam thing - there must be some teeth jammed up
because there's no way it could be that tough to drive
without the power steering alone" said Dave. Dave
continued to drive up through the field. "In a
caution filled race with numerous accidents including Dave's
rival for the championship; Shawn McGlynn (engine failure)
and Matt Robblee (accident) Dave fought his way to 5th
spot. "It took us an hour to run a 50 lap race
that should have taken 25 min. - at the end I thought my
arms were going to fall off - I was done - the heat in the
cars today was almost unbearable - I saw Matt crawl out of
his car in the first race and he could hardly breathe"
said Dave.
"We
dodged a big bullet today - we're still in 3rd in the points
battle and lucky to be there - we tried to run lighter and
pick up some time but it killed us on handling - the other
side to this is we may be able to move some lead around and
get some more rear weight in the car and make it handle
better with less fuel.....we'll spend a day on the scales
and see what we can do. The tricky part is that our
cars going home with Ashley Taws #72 (Newmarket, Ontario)
and we're borrowing a truck from Brennan Didero #24 and
until our truck gets fixed we can't pick up the car. I
just hope our FORD dealer in Ottawa is willing to work as
hard as my crew did this weekend. The guys have been up
since Friday morning and running on 2 hours of
sleep.......we're all pretty wiped"
"Our next race is Peterborough - we finished 2nd there
a month ago - we've got great notes and I'm sure I can win
it."
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