6/17/2023: Riverhead Raceway - Wall of Fame Night | Baldwin/Evans/Jarzombek Memorial

Fortune smiles upon us on this fine raceday, as we seem to have dodged any potential bad weather. It's cloudy, warm with a nice breeze, overall a pretty good day for being out at the track. My allergies strongly protest the idea of being outside at all, let alone all day, but they'll get over it. During the week, Ed made some more adjustments to the car, and both of us are chomping at the bit to get the car on the track to see how it works out.

Once we got to the track and got through all our set up items, we went over the car one last time and settled in to wait for our time on the track. I kept half an eye on the weather just to see how likely anything was to roll through, but it changes every few minutes anyways.

The first round of practice, Ed took it easy, since he wasn't sure how the car was going to handle, and with the addition of a few spinners, there was no chance to settle into any sort of rhythm.

After a brief intermission, courtesy of mother nature, we were able to get out for round two of practice. Ed likes the changes, and from my perspective, the car looked more stable. Now we wait as the Tour Mods have their time trials and then we get to race our heat. Our pill draw of 66 placed us in the 3rd heat, starting 7th out of 8. We need to pass only one car and maintain our position, and we have a decent shot based on who's in our heat.

We did it! We raced our way in through our heat race! After Ed passed the car he needed to, and solidified his spot on the track he just cruised around for the rest of the heat. There was no way he was gonna catch the guys in front of him and no danger of the guys behind him catching up to him. No sense in pushing the car too hard when your in a good spot.

We ended up starting the feature in 17th after a bit of confusion when one of the guys ahead of us elected to drop to the rear, but eventually things got underway and we were able to start the race. Ed is getting better as the starts and restarts, not loosing too much ground or anything, like he used to, but it's still difficult when you're in the back half of the field. Somehow we managed to avoid all of the chaos and carnage on the track and came home in 11th! We had a very clean day overall, to the point where both our bumpers were still straight, which is more than like 80% of the others can say. 

All in all, Ed and I are still amazed by our awesome feature finish, even the day after. We don't expected this to happen every week, since a good amount of luck is needed in any sort of racing, but we now know we can survive hanging with the big boys. And a huge shout out to the driver who won our feature #18 Jeffery Farruggia Jr, who is an amazing driver and an incredibly hard worker. He earned this one and I sincerely hope this was the start to an amazing season with many more trips to victory lane.

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