The trip to Ontario was good and disappointing. The best part was the visit to Glendale Secondary School and our lap times at Peterborough Speedway. The school visit was a home run and very enjoyable for us, the students and teachers.
Overall t wasn’t what I had hoped for in many ways. The down side was parts breaking or fatiguing at Flamboro, not including the damaged parts from the accident. We lost a drive shaft, twisted from torque, plus the loss of the clutch operation when the clutch master gave up. These parts were over 5 years old. We also came to Ontario after completing 1900 laps in the Maritimes. Pro Late Models in Ontario would have accumulated much less. Racing all 9 APC races would give 1000 laps, and running 8 nights at Flamboro with their Twin 30’s would be another 480 making 1480 laps for a team that ran all those races.
We had 3 flat tires, all on the trailer. One 4 hours into our trip, another heading up Westover road heading to Jim Sweers when construction workers guided us around a narrow hole but missed another one. I could not see it and dropped the wheel into a foot deep hole, bending the rim and flattening the tire. The third happened on our way to Shirley and Derricks on one of the country side roads.
We also were rained out at Peterborough for their ACC event. Friday and Saturday were great weather wise but Sunday was canceled. The race was rescheduled for the next Saturday, October 14th . That meant Shannon had to fly back home to go to work. Shirley helped us get a good deal on a flight but not having Shannon part of the crew meant us possibly missing something, plus we were going to miss each other.
The good side was very good. Special thanks to my children David and Jeannie, Shirley and Derrick for giving us amazing hospitality. Also thanks to my best friend and long time crew member Jim Hulzinga for providing tries for us and hotel rooms for the ACC race. Jim Sweers was a huge help with maintaining the car for the Flamboro race. John Van Wyngaarten fixed the bent rim for us, John Casale provided 2 tires for Flamboro and Ben Freiburger helped Shannon and I get the car maintained at the Freiburger shop in Walkerton allowing us to use his shop and welding up the broken exhaust. Peter De New for his help getting us back into Glendale Secondary School. Thank you so much to all these family and friends who helped us make this trip possible.
Peterborough Autumn Colors Classic
The bright side for Peterborough was how good our car handled in the beginning. This track is much like Petty International Raceway, one of my favorites in the Maritimes. We had good practice lap times every session. Qualifying was Saturday. Prior to the group qualifying we turned our fastest lap ever at this track…14:04. Not as fast as the young guns with no qualifying trim applied, but really good for us. We were 7th fastest on the final practice Saturday morning. However most all cars did things to their car for qualifying and we did nothing and ended up 15th of 21 for the feature.
On Saturday we had another good practice session turning 14:15 with OSCAAR Modified racer Tyler Liscum spotting for us. Jim would make it in lots of time for the race. Not sure why, but things went terribly bad for us in the feature. Our car was suddenly not drivable. The handling was gone after only 10 to 12 laps. We were tight in the middle and loose off, something we hadn’t seen in practice.
I spun out on lap 28. We tried to make adjustments but it was worse. We went down a lap but got the lucky dog. We pitted again to try and fix the handling but something was wrong we were not going to be able to fix. Our crew of Jim Hulzinga spotting, Ken Stenhouse, Ken MacLennan, Lloyd Lariviere and Dave Wickens did the best they could to get the car right but we would spin out again and back into the wall hard. The boys noticed oil leaking from the quick change cover, a fairly big puddle the first time I came in, but it got worse as the race went on. Not sure if we spun in our oil, or something else.
I parked the car around lap 75 for good, could not drive it let alone race. A disappointing day for sure. It was our last race of the season with much damage front and rear. In the pits we were smiling knowing we had a fast car early and something changed. I thanked everyone for their awesome help. Ken MacLennan and I left for Nova Scotia at 6:30 right after the races and got home around 3:30 the next day, we drove straight through. Ken had family in Truro and wanted to visit them. I surely appreciated him helping drive back.
Season #55 is over. I will post highlights of the season soon. Our regular crew will get on the car soon to rebuild for 2024.
God bless you all.
Picture courtesy of Derek Smith from Race Pulse
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