April 30, 2005

Canyon Raceway a little known dirt track west of Phoenix. Key word "dirt" not much water. Dry's out quick. Many of the fans have been seen wearing goggles because of the dust. The one nice thing about this place is you get to pit out of your trailer instead of unloading everything inside like at Manzy. The sprint cars have been averaging 37 cars a race but with the reputation of this track only 28 showed up this week. The track and push trucks did what they could to uphold their bad reputation. It started at wheel packing. Anybody that's been there knows and has heard stories of the guy in the old step side Chevy pickup. Only a few cars had gotten on the track when somehow the Chevy push truck runs head on with a sprint car and put him out of compition for the night. No noticeable damage to the Chevy, "unbelievable." Push truck driver seems unshaken unlike the sprint car driver and owner.

Cole (remember him, this is about Cole) goes out to wheel pack probably 20 laps or so. The car comes in and is virtually clean, not much mud on the car. As he comes in we hear a noise from the rear of the car. A snapping sound. With Dave Legue and Dave Jr.'s help, we pull the left tire off and remove the Bird Cage for inspection. It seems fine we grease it and no more noise but he missed hot laps. No big deal. We are in the 3rd heat, 2nd row inside. On the start they get called back and the front row gets put to the back for some reason but it looked OK to everybody else. This puts Cole on the pole with Jeremy Sherman right behind him. Jeremy gives him a little tap to wake him up. Cole nails it and leads the pack to turn one, Jeremy gets outside of Cole and they come out of turn 2, 3 wide down the back, Cole stays to the bottom but comes out 3rd out of turn 4. Jeremy is first. Bruce St. James is second they finish the race in that order. A straight away ahead of the rest. Cole makes the main. He's 6th row inside.

As the race starts he gets a good jump and is running about 8th place. It doesn't take long for a crash on the freshly watered track. Turn 2, Bryan Hacker is sideways. Under caution here comes the Chevy truck to give him a push. Well, he missed it a little and went over the left rear and stuffs the bumper into the drivers left side. Broke the shock and flattened the tire. They have to use the wrecker to pull him off the race car and then to pickup Bryan's car. Instead of taking it to the work area they carried it to the inside of the track, no chance to get back in the race. The Chevy seems to come out undamaged, may have a scratch on the primer paint though. I don't know, driver seems unbothered, not nearly as upset as the race car driver, pit crew and owner. Oh yeah, back to Cole. As this crash was happening he was going over the berm in turn 2 on 2 wheels, but saved it and was still running but on the restart he was pushed back to 16 place. Several more crashes, one red before they got to run the final 17 laps or so to the end. The track started taking on rubber with about 5 to go, it was a tough track to drive. Cole held on, moved up to the top, down to the bottom, in the middle, trying to find some traction. Nothing was there. He finished 14th. OK, but still looking for that top 10. It's sad to think one push truck driver ended that night for two race cars and cost them more in parts than that damned old Chevy is worth. Next up Sprints at Manzy on May 7th.