    |
 |
|
Something Totally Different! Andrew Smith takes a break from Legends Series for some high-powered fun. After a posting a great start to his 2008 INEX RaceCeiver Legends Series season, Andrew Smith took a weekend off to go SCCA road racing at the Roebling Road Raceway in the ASR Monte Carlo Late Model. The weekend started on Saturday morning with qualifying. Road racing car divisions are somewhat different than circle track and can be somewhat confusing. Andrew's class - SPO (Super Production Over) - qualified with eleven other classes -some slower, some faster - to form Group 4. Out of the 44 cars in his group, Andrew qualified 5th with a time of 1:15.029 on the 2.02 mile course. Not too bad for his first time running with the SCCA veterans, some with 800+ HP!
After the morning qualifying was completed, feature races were slated to begin after the lunch break. About the time Group 2 was completing their race, the skies opened up and unloaded a tremendous amount of rain on the course. This didn't look too good for the ASR team since all the team had were 10" Hoosier racing slicks on the car. Racing slicks and water do not mix. But as is usual with road racing, the rain did not stop the action. On the grid, some of the teams had put on rain tires, which would be a tremendous advantage for them. Andrew had resigned himself to the fact that he would probably be passed by much slower cars that had on the rain tires. After making a couple of hesitant laps to feel out the track, Andrew found the track to be drying very quickly and he was able to utilize more of the power under the hood of the ASR Monte Carlo. Since most of the cars ahead of him had on the rain tires, their lap times were slowing down on the drying surface while Andrew's speeds were picking up. By lap 10 of the 17-lap event, Andrew was battling for the lead. That's also about the time trouble came. While attempting to pass the leader in Turn 3 of the 9-turn course, Andrew was crowded to the outside of the track and his right-side tires got off on the wet grass. At that point, he was just along for a very fast backwards ride that ended with the white #62 sitting backwards on top of the tire barrier / dirt berm with what appeared to be extensive damage to both ends of the car. Thankfully, Andrew was unhurt in the incident. With speeds in that section of the track in the 100 mph range, the outcome could have been much worse. "When it turned around, it felt like a just kept getting faster and faster," said Andrew, "but the hit didn't feel that hard at all." The ASR team loaded up the car and headed back to the ASR shop for a long night of repairs to get ready for the next day's event. Upon closer inspection, the damage was mainly cosmetic and no suspension parts were found to be damaged. After several hours of beating, banging, riveting and taping, the crew loaded the car back in the hauler in pretty decent condition and ready for battle again. Sunday's schedule was the same as Saturday's. Andrew, still shaking the car down from Saturday's repairs, fell off on his times a little and wound up with an 8th place qualifying spot. As his race began, it quickly became evident that something was not quite right with the car. The nose of the car was visibly caving in on the long 1-mile front stretch and hurting Andrew's speed tremendously. Apparently, some of the bracing had been weakened during an earlier off-track incident and would not support the nose of the car at speed. Even with this disadvantage, Andrew was able to bring home a 3rd place finish. While it was not exactly the results the team had hoped for, all in all, it was a successful and fun weekend. Andrew and the team are still learning the handling and setup of these full-sized cars and once they have a little more experience, the competition will be looking for the white #62 as one of the cars to beat. Andrew and the team would also like to mention the folks at V8Stockcar.com. Lee, Bosco, and all the guys were very happy to have Andrew racing with them and invited him to become a member and competitor with this series. The V8StockCar series promotes big-bore road racing and is quickly becoming one of the premier series for stock car road racing. For more information on V8StockCar racing, check out their website at www.v8stockcar.com.
|
