2002 News

 

 

10/26/02 - I don't think that we could have had any better of an end to this up and down season!  Doug worked his butt off on the car, and I didn't think that I was going to drive it, but with a last minute change, I ended up in the driver's seat for the final five minute practice.  The car was great in practice, and I knew we had something that was definetly capable of winning.  We went out for qualifying, and got our first pole ever with a lap time of 15.756!  The car was handling like it was on a rail the whole way around the track.  Doug, who ended up driving the #3 of Brock Brantley qualified in third with a 15.78, but was sent to the back for being just about an 1/8" too low.  So the stage was set for an awesome race, and that it was.  We got out to an early lead, pulling away from the #22 of Ed Evans, but Doug in the #3 was coming through the pack hard and fast.  With a couple of cautions, Doug had made it into fourth place, and when the green came out, he worked his way into second with about 25 laps to go in the 50 lap race.  He had closed in to within 2 car lengths with two laps to go, and stuck his nose down once in turns 1 and 2 on the white flag lap.  With the checkered flag flying, the #07 spun off of turn four, and Doug spun to avoid us, but we still came across the finish line first!!!  It was a 1-2 finish for the cars that Doug Mauldin had labored so much on, and it was our first win in the Grand Stocks!!!  I really owe it to Doug, Sam, Robert, Brock, and all the guys who really worked hard on the car, and I really have to thank Doug for talking me into driving the car Saturday.  He told me one thing that will always stick with me: "Everything happens for a reason."  And boy was he right!

9/14/02 - Well, same old story.  Rain again.  They managed to get the two late model races in, but decided it was raining too hard to get any other races in, so we didn't get to run.  In a way, it was a blessing because our driver was not feeling too good with a cold, but we really had an awesome handling car.  Doug and the guys at the shop really worked hard on it, and had the car just handling awesome in practice.  I guess we'll have to wait until next month to find out.  As far as points go, that means that August 10th was our last points race, so we ended up tied for third place in points (officially fourth since Tommy has more second place finishes than we do), and we really can't complain.  We had a season full of thrills and spills, and we can't complain since we accomplished and surpassed our goals we set at the beggining of the year.  I never would have thought we'd be running this good as a rookie team, but we've had a lot of help.  Next year is still kind of up in the air, so stay tuned for updates throughout the winter...

9/7/02 - Doug Mauldin will make a return to racing in the #07 for the 50 lap Grand Stock race as part of the Bailey's Haloween Classic on October the 26th and 27th.  We are all excited to see what the #07 will do in the hands of such an experienced driver.  Make sure to come out and watch!

8/31/02 - Rain, rain, rain.  We really have needed all the rain that we got the past week, but we were hoping we could get this race in.  Doug Mauldin really worked hard on the car this week, and got the front end geometry perfect.  We also changed the shocks around, and felt like we really had an awesome car ready for this week.  But, we'll have to wait and see.  The race was rescheduled for September 14th, which will be the last points race of the season.

8/10/02 - After a long break in between races, we came out again with only minor changes, and we thought that we had a pretty good car.  We qualified in fifth place, and on the initial start, we got into the fourth place, with the #27 of Flann McLaughlin right behind us.  The car was just starting to come in to us on about lap 15 when the #37 of Tommy Chandler spun, and the #78 of Warren Taylor got tangled up with him.  We didn't see the wreck until we were almost on top of it, and we spun out, leaving the #27 with nowhere to go except into the driver's side door of the #07.  The race was redflagged, and besides a flat left front, the #07 had not sustained too much major damage, so we pulled in the pits, and the crew did an awesome job of getting the car jacked up.  The chassis was resting on the ground because of the flat tire, which made it almost impossible to get the jack under it.  We came back out just in time for the restart in the rear of the field, and although the #07 wasn't quite handling right (due to bent tie rod ends and center link from the wreck), we worked our way back up through the field to finish in fourth place.  Overall we were pretty happy with the results.  We moved up to third in points after our second strong week in a row, and are really looking forward to the next race.

7/29/02 - After a few weekends of getting rained out, we finally got a race in, and I think that we finally ended our bad luck streak.  We came out with high hopes since we had plenty of time to get all the bugs worked out.  Then, after practice, the rain hit.  We were all disgusted, thinking that we were going to have to wait another week to show how good this car would run, but the safety crew at OCS worked hard, and got the track dried quickly enough to get racing.  We only had one lap of qualifying, and we turned a 15.83, which is our fastest all year.  But, there were a lot of other fast cars, and we started in the fifth position.  On the intial start, we passed the #37 of Tommy Chandler, and the top four consisting of Brian Cole, Billy Purnell, Warren Taylor, and the #07 broke away from the rest of the pack.  A caution came out when the #08 of Taylor Moore spun on the front stretch, and we got an awesome restart, getting around the #78 of Warren Taylor, and finishing the race in the third spot!  It was an awesome comeback week, one that the crew and everyone involved with the #07 really deserved.  The crew deserves a huge thank you for the amount of work they did, we definetely wouldn't be running this good if it wasn't for such a dedicated and hard working crew.  Also, I forgot to mention a couple names when we were in the post race interview, so I have to thank Bobby and Sam for thier hard work on the car, and also Charlie Hemphill for rounding up a whole bunch of parts to help Doug get this motor together.  Hopefully we'll bring home a win in the near future!!

6/29/02 - When we got the car back to the shop this week, we decided to run a compression check because of how many problems we had out of the motor in the previous race.  We found out that every cylinder only had about 120 pounds of compression, and the #8 cylinder wasn't firing at all.  We knew we were taking a chance when running on a two year old motor, so we had to do the inevitable, and pull the motor out.  We decided to just go back in it with new rings and bearings for the rest of this year, and then work out something else for next year.  So, we came back this race again with high hopes, and we had plenty of horsepower, but no handling to back it up.  The car was way too loose, qualified fifth with a 16.12, and we managed to hang on to seventh place in the race.  So, we'll go back to work on it again this week, and maybe we'll have it handling for the next one.

6/15/02 - We worked on the car for another two weeks, and really had it running good in open practice on Thursday.  We came out to the track on Saturday, and we had the fastest car in both practices.  We qualified in the 15.90's, which we figured was good enough for a top three.  It wasn't.  We started in fifth place.  Then it all went downhill from there.  We messed up the ignition timing on the motor, making the motor run too hot and lean, blew a header gasket, picked up a miss, but we were still hanging on to fifth place.  The car was still handling great, it just wouldn't go anywhere down the straightaway.  After we passed the #37 of Tommy Chandler for fourth place, the #51 of James Turner got into our left rear fender, sending both of us towards the bottom of the track with him going up and over the hood of the #07.  Our night was over, and we gained another DNF and ended up in 9th place.

6/1/02 - We knew that some changes needed to be made, so we worked on the setup for another two weeks, and this time had the track rented to test it.  We finally got the car running awesome in practice and ran a string of three 15.90's before putting it on the trailer.  We came out Saturday with high hopes, and even though it was a tad on the loose side, we figured it would tighten up as the night went on, so we left it as it was.  Again, we missed the setup for the race, but managed to hold on to a 6th place finish.

5/25/02 - After what seemed like a very fast two weeks, we had changed almost everything on the car, and came back to the track with a whole different setup.  We should have tested it before we put it out to race, but we thought that it really couldn't get much worse.  We came to the track and really struggled with a qualfiying time of 16.20, which put us in the 6th place.  From there, we spun once, went two laps down, and ended up limping home with an 11th place finish.

5/11/02 - Well, we knew the good luck had to end sometime.  In our two weeks off, we rented the track and went to open practice, and both times were slower than we had been all year.  We came to the track struggling again, and managed to turn a 16.05 which was pretty good considering the week before when we rented the track we were running 16.40's and .50's.  We figured if we could just hang on for a top five this week, we'd be in pretty good shape.  On the third lap of the race the #54 of Mike McMillan and the #07 got together, sending the #07 spinning down to the inside of the backstretch.  After reviewing the videotape, it looks like the #54 pushed up the track out of turn 2 into the left rear quarter panel of the #07, and then just as we were about to get it under control, he hit the #07 again in the rear, sending us spinning down to the inside of the track.  So, we had to start in the rear of the pack, and after the #38 of Billy Purnell blew his motor up into a ball of flames, there was a lot of quick-dry down low in turn four, making it almost impossible to pass.  Then, on lap 22, the #54 spun by himself, and the #27 of Flann McLaughlin hit the brakes and slid sideways into the front end of the #54.  With the track pretty much blocked, the #07 hit the brakes and spun sideways into the rear of the #27.  It wasn't a real hard hit, but it was straight to the rear axle, so a lot of damage was done.  It broke the panhard bar, bent the rear end housing, the driveshaft, the right rear shock, the right rear rim, busted the battery, and beat up a whole bunch of sheetmetal on the right side.  So, we have a lot of work to do these next couple weeks, but we'll be back out there next week... 

4/20/02 - We tried out another set of shocks for this week, and in open practice on Thursday, the car was turning slow times, and we looped it twice.  But, we decided it was probably because of the old tires and track conditions, and came to the track Saturday, and looped it again in practice.  We put two new tires on for the second practice, which tightened the car up way too much, so we had to guess at it again for qualifying.  Turn four was very slick, and on our first qualifying lap, we turned it around coming out of four.  We managed a good second lap of 15.96, which put us in the third spot.  The very fast #3 of Timmy Ferrell was starting right behind us, and about two laps into the race, he made it three wide, forcing the #07 to back out of it, which allowed the #38 of Billy Purnell to get by, putting the #07 in fourth place.  We had a lot of trouble getting by the #38, the car just wouldn't stick coming out of the corner whenever we would pull low to pass.  His car finally got tight towards the end of the race, allowing the #07 to make an easy pass with two laps to go, earning our first podium finish in third place!!  The thing we were really happy about, is it seems like we're closing in on the lead cars.  Before we were almost two tenths behind in qualifying, in this race, we were only a half a tenth behind the #10 car.

4/6/02 - For once, we actually took the car off of the trailer and it felt good.  We didn't even go out for the second practice, and had a qualifying lap of 15.86, which was good enough for the fourth spot.  We got up and ran with the #10 and the #78 car for the first part of the race, and as the race went on, the car got looser, and the #37 of Tommy Chandler closed up the gap.  We managed to hold him off, and had another great race finishing in the fourth spot.

3/30/02 -  In our second race, we struggled again through practice, had a decent qualifying time of 16.01, which would have been good enough for fifth place.  However, when we pushed the car around the the scales for a pre race inspection, the left side of the car was just a touch too low, so we were sent to the back of the pack to start the race.  We worked our way up to 9th place when there was an accident between the #78 of Warren Taylor and the #55 of Kevin Herndon.  Both cars were out of the race, moving us up to 7th place.  While still under caution, the #22 of Ed Evans had a flat tire, and the #10 of Brian Cole ran out of gas, moving us up to fifth place, which is where we finished the race.  So, thanks to some bad luck of other drivers, we had another awesome top five night!

3/23/02 -  It's our first race in the Grand Stocks, and everybody is nervous but expecting a pretty good day.  We started out the first practice running some very slow times, but Steve made some very good calls, and we were right on for qualifying, and started the race in 6th.  We had a very uneventful first night, which was very good to calm all of our nerves, and finished in 5th, which we were all extremely happy with!