5/21/2023: Riverhead Raceway - Buzz Chew 200 (NWMT)

It's a cool Sunday morning overcast, but no threat of rain as we head to the track.... wait, Sunday? That's right! Our race this weekend got pushed to Sunday after Mother Nature said no to Saturday night racing, and the fact that the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour is going to be racing at Riverhead. Since the big boys are in town, we thankfully still get to race this weekend instead of just being rained put like we otherwise would have been.

With our trailer repaired and all the other little things from last week fixed, we're ready to go and hopefully make the feature tonight. With racing moved to Sunday, we're unsure of how many cars to expect, but Ed thinks we'll get our usually 30-35 cars. After a quick walk around the pits once we were unloaded and set up, it looks like there are less cars here than usual, and without actually counting them all, it seems like everyone has a shot at making the feature tonight.

Turns out, there were only 29 cars checked in for our division, which means there are only 3 heats. Top 8 cars transfer to the feature, and they will add 2 points provisionals to bring the field up to 26 cars in the main event. We're starting 5th in Heat #1, but our heat isn't as stacked as it has been the past few weeks. Our practice rounds went pretty good, with Ed hitting a 13.9 in the first round where he had clear track, and in the second round he ran fairly consistently while trying out some different lines on track.

We might as well have not even bothered with our heat race today since we got taken out by someone making a bonehead move coming to the green flag. Cut tire, bent radius arm, and a destroyed bumper as a result. We had some amazing people back in the pits come over to help us get the tire changed, but unfortunately as we were driving up to the gate to rejoin, the track closed the gate, locking us out of the heat race and our chance to race our way into the feature. Ed did reach out to the track after the fact, and we found out that their regular official who watches the pits for drivers trying to re-enter the track was not there and the race director had her hands full trying to sort the remaining cars on track back into some semblance of order.

I wish this was a little longer, but we only got 14 laps of racing in this weekend. It started really really good, with Ed driving his best yet this season and ended really bad as we got got caught up in someone else's mistakes. It's weekends like this that make it really hard to remember that this is supposed to be fun, and it's all a part of short track racing, but to be blunt, it sucks. Hopefully next week goes better and we actually get to race our heat.

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~Sam (I can be found at KazulStudios on all social media)