All afternoon we had rain showers and storms in our area. This has become typical for Friday nights this season. It looked pretty bleak for the chance to get tonight’s race in. But as has been the case for more than two years, the clouds parted and tonight’s event would go on as scheduled. Of course it meant racing on a track with wet spots all through the turns. Our 10 inch wide slick tires won’t stick a bit on water. It’s almost like driving on ice when you hit the wet spots. In practice, the going was treacherous. It was evident our work this week had not solved the handling concerns on the 31 car. We’re truly baffled by the inability to get this car back to handling as well as last season. It’s not for lack of trying. Brian, the owner of the 31 car is also a super talented suspension person. He’s tried all the changes which should make the car handle better. We’ve checked, re-checked and measured everything on the car. Late Model Stock Cars have hundreds of adjustments. The problem is every change effects something else. It’s all a balancing act. Add to this we are chasing a moving target, and you’ll understand why this is so hard to do. Temperature, humidity, sunlight and several other factors can quickly turn a good handling car into a handful to drive. We made several adjustments for qualifying. When Chris pulled out, it was clear in his first turn the car was still not right. His lap of 15.546 would end up 10th fast of the 20 cars here tonight. We’ve grown accustomed to qualifying in the top five, so 10th is a disappointment for our team. We tried more changes to hopefully get the car to turn better. Our time gave Chris the front row pole position for the fast heat race. The fast heat is a ten lap race for the fastest ten cars at the track. At the drop of the green flag, Chris just flat drove away from the field. The 31 car felt much better than it has lately. Still not perfect, but faster than the cars behind us. Chris won the race by several car lengths. Since the car was pretty close now, we didn’t make many adjustments for the feature race. The down side of qualifying bad is we missed the invert. In short track racing, they don’t start the fastest car on the front row. They roll a dice every week after qualifying to determine the number of cars to invert for the race. This can be anywhere from six to twelve. Tonight as luck would have it, the smallest invert possible was rolled. This meant Chris would start from the fifth row outside position. Not a great place to start. But it’s a fair way to line up the cars, and every now and then it benefits us too. At the start, the car looked pretty racy. Chris was able to find a hole on the low side pretty quickly. He began passing cars and moving forward. On a normal feature race, at some point there is usually a spin or crash which allows the cars to bunch up. Tonight, the race ran green to checkered flag with not a single yellow flag. Chris raced forward to the sixth position. He ran down the fifth place car from quite a ways back, and was clearly faster, but just ran out of laps before he could complete the pass. Chris finished a solid sixth place. He really drove his heart out tonight. The poor qualifying run just made the feature a tough race from the back. He was one of the better cars at the end of the race. I’m really proud of how well he drove tonight. Chris is currently second in the season long point standings. This makes it all the more difficult to know Chris will miss the next two weeks of racing. Last year, Chris made arrangements to join his wife Danielle for a two week trip to Europe. Danielle recent graduated from her Residency at the Milwaukee Children’s Hospital. This trip is to celebrate her hard work and dedication making through college, medical school, and her residency before beginning her career as a doctor in private practice. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for Chris and Danielle. They will start their journey in Rome and travel all over the countryside. Of course the track is long overdue for a rain-out or two, so you’ll see me doing a rain dance the next two Friday nights. Sorry to our competitors for the selfish attitude… Tuesday night we will be participating in the Downtown Tinley Park Cruise night. This popular event is held every Tuesday night on Oak Park Avenue in Downtown Tinley park. Our primary sponsor, Central Collision Centers has two locations on Oak Park Ave. The event draws an incredible variety of cars from all over the area. Muscle Cars, Hot Rods, Customs, they’re all here. It’s free and fun, so why not stop by and meet Chris if you’re in the area. We’ll have the beautiful 31 cars shined up and looking great. Okay, up close it has a few battle scars from the season, but it still looks awesome. I’ll post photos after the event on Chris’ Facebook fan page. https://facebook/pages/Chris-Cooling-Racing/348125951371 We once again thank the good people at Central Collision Centers, Shorewood Animal Hospital, T&D Bowling and Awards, Carhart Vinyl Lettering, Blast Off sandblasting, Jones Soda, and of course the Caddy Shop for all their support of Chris and Brian. Without their support, we would not be able to compete at this level. Please consider using their services if you have a need for something they provide. I know you’ll be glad you did. Chris will be back in two weeks looking to win some more races. I’ll post videos from tonight’s action later this weekend at my YouTube site. Search Racefan71. More updates as new information comes in. Chris is looking for a sponsor for a high profile ARCA Midwest series event July 19th at the Grundy County Speedway. The Wayne Carter Classic is a premier event drawing drivers from all over the Midwest. The event will cost about $1200 - $1500 to run, and we currently just don’t have enough in the budget to run the special event held yearly at the Grundy County Speedway. It has the potential for good exposure and normally draws a large audience. If you know any company looking to jump into using racing to advertise its services, we love to talk to them. Of course all our current sponsors will remain on the car if we find the funds to race in this event. You can have any potential sponsor call me at 815-955-6100 for more information. Thanks for following Chris and his racing adventures. John Cooling
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 07:31:23 +0000
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