Four race weekend yields a 2nd, 4th, 7th and 14th place finish.
Friday night saw Mark and team travel to Lee County Speedway in Donnellson, IA for the second installment of the “Drive for Five” IMCA weekly late model series. Mark finished second in his heat and drew the seventh starting position for the feature event. In the feature, Mark was able to track down fifth starting Jeff Aikey but was unable to make the pass for the win (including a last corner attempt) finishing one car length behind Jeff for second place. After two races, Mark holds a five point advantage over Denny Woodworth in the point standings.
On Saturday night the team ventured north to 34 Raceway for IMCA weekly racing action and to do some in race testing. As luck would have it, we experienced fuel pump problems in the heat and rearend problems in the feature resulting in a seventh place finish. All told we learned a few things (that didn’t improve the handling of the car) and fortuitously worked out a few mechanical gremlins.
On Sunday night, Mark and team ventured down to Tri-City Speedway in Granite City, IL (St. Louis area) to run the open car in the UMP sanctioned $10,000 to win / $700 to start late model special. In qualifying Mark timed 26th out of 41 cars after grazing the turn four wall in his qualifying attempt. From his sixth position starting spot in the heat, Mark finished third earning a transfer to the main event. In the feature, Billy Moyer set the early pace and went on to lead all fifty laps earning the big paycheck. While our fourteenth place finish (started eleventh) doesn’t reflect such, we did marginally improve the handling of the open car and will continue to tweak the set-up over the coming weeks as we embark on more open motor UMP racing.
Rounding out the holiday weekend, the NMI team trekked northwest four and a half hours to race in the seventh (of sixteen) IMCA Deery Brothers races at Boone (IA) Speedway on Memorial Day. In the heat, Mark secured the heat race victory (after starting sixth) following a last lap pass of Ray Guss. However in the redraw for the feature event, Mark would draw the ninth starting position while Guss would draw the fourth starting position. After an early caution on lap two, the race would run the remaining 38 laps under green with Guss cruising to the victory and Mark finishing fourth after (again) battling low fuel pressure and getting hung up behind lap traffic late in the race, dropping from second to fourth. Following this event, we trail Ray Guss by eight points in the Deery standings and hold a forty point advantage over third place Jeff Aikey.
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