March, 2005

Welcome back race fans. A new season has begun. Saturday night March 12, at Manzanita Speedway, 360 non-winged Sprint cars. First night jitters could be seen in the pits and on the track. As the night began wheel packing was prolonged due to over watering the track. This made for a long night although the track did come in and stayed tacky.

The Sprint car club has required transponders for all cars this year so to test them qualifying was the order of the night. As the track was still wet the first cars out times were slow. Cole went out just past half way and timed in at 15.271. That was 9 th fastest out of 35 cars. Sad to say but that was the high point of the night for Cole and the Racer Promotions Team. Advice from Dave Ellis the car handled and looked good.

The heat race started with Cole out side third row. First turn he ran it in a little too hard as did others but being on the outside he ran up over the edge and came out in last place. He managed to catch the pack but ran out of time this put him in the Semi Main. There was quite a bit of confusion on the line up. It was changed after cars were on the track, this took numerous laps to straighten out. As the race started on the first lap there was a red flag. After the next restart they had several more cautions. Cole was dodging crash after crash but in doing so he wound up toward the back of the 15 car field. In the pit we noticed the car seemed to slow somewhat.

In the end he finished 9 th but only 4 transferred to the main. So our night was done. When the car came in we noticed the temp was at 230 degrees, not good and possibly why it seemed to slow toward the end of the race. Not a good night for the team but walking through the pits I noticed some big name drivers watching the main event. We got a week off then it’s back at Manzanita on the 26 th of March. We’ll find the over heating problem and be back. See you there.

P.S. Cole will be racing as an adult now, he turns 18 March 17 th.