HayWire Racing’s BLOG

Enough with the lame Rocky IV quotes. The bottom line is this, I’m throwing in the towel on this deal. I don’t really want to air my laundry, but I’m gonna vent a bit.

I’ll go work on the car this weekend, and I think one more weekend and it’ll be done. I’m just tired, beat up and very very frustrated about a lot of different things. So, if the weather is bad and the race is cancelled, all is good. If the weather is nice, I’ll be out of the running for that “Rookie-of-the-Year” title from the get go. There are a lot of people that didn’t want me to run for it anyway, so I guess it’ll work out good for them. In the end, I’m just tired of fighting for every last little thing. At some point, all the little things stacked against me compile together to become insurmountable. This entire process has taught me a lot about who is who and where I stand. I will remember this moving into the future. Looking ahead, this post bumps that record to 21 for one month. I think that will most likely stand for a long time to come. I think I’m going to seriously rethink the effort I put into all this, the blog, the Newsletter, the Facebook fan page, the Twitter account, the press releases, and on and on. The lack of respect for what I do is not acceptable any more. This all costs me a large amount of time and more importantly, money. Money out of my own pocket. With that said. . .

To my team, best of luck with the “other cars”.

To my sponsors, I apologize. I hope you will stick with me.

To the fans, hope to see you at the second race. That first one is out of reach. I give up. As for the normal sign off, you know the deal. . .

Not a lot to post, but I wanted to put some thoughts up for you guys to read. Nothing of real importance, but some thoughts none the less. . .

There was a time back when I was first getting started in racing, back when it was just my Dad, Wes (a close friend of ours) and myself running Hobby Stocks and then Street Stocks, there was a small group of people I raced with that I looked up to. They were the “elite” at our track. They knew how to win races and Championships. In that group was Kevin Carver, Bryan Bykerk, Phil Willis, Brian Bowman and Al Carver. I mention this because Bryan Bykerk just wrapped up the Street Stock Championship at Southsound Speedway this year. Bryan was a juggernaut all season long, winning Main Events one after another, breaking the track record several times and pretty much just dominating week after week. Kevin Carver just wrapped up the Northwest Outlaw Street Stock Championship too. Hats off to both these guys, they continue to show why I admired them then and still do today. I consider my self lucky to count them among my friends.

Now, all I gotta do is figure out how to get back to Victory Lane myself. I wonder if I could “Google” the directions. . . .

Not much happened around the HayWire Racing shop over the past weekend. But my how things changed in the local racing scene!

We took a weekend off with everyone having some different things that needed done. But the past weekend brought the annual WARPA meeting. For those who don’t know, WARPA is the Western Auto Racing Promoter Association. Once a year they hold a meeting to hash out schedules, rules and any other thing that could use some input from the “community”. This year, the talk was all about the merging of the two big Late Model tours in this area. Moving forward, the ASA Northwest Tour & the ARCA-West Late Model Challenge Series will become one touring series.

What this means for us is that once Tommy’s car is prep’ed for the new season, it will be this series instead of the ARCA-West LMCS that he will be looking towards. You can read the story broke by the Everett Herald’s own Scott Whitmore by clicking here.

We were part of the birth of the LMCS “way back in the day”. Tommy ran with them for many years until the cost began to creep to the point where we could no longer afford it. Now, we again stepped in when the LLMRS came to us and said “We’re getting back to basics, good budget Late Model racing”. The LMCS rode the wave and things got to be pretty “big time” for them. But now it seems like the tide is rolling out instead of in for all the full blown Late Model series’ around the USA

 Only time will tell what will come of this new series to rise from this merger. Big car counts should be the first thing we’ll see. With the LMCS averaging 16-20 cars & the NW-Tour averaging another 12-16, we could see B-mains again. Wouldn’t that be nice? Well, it would be if you aren’t in them!

As for me? I’m going to kick back & enjoy my birthday. Oh yea, & I gotta work too.

So the time has come for us to think not of our race team, but of another one of our fellow competitors. . .

It seems that on July 16th, the No. 84 Brandt Law Firm Chevrolet team and thier driver Christian Roeder were headed to Montana for the Montana 200 when the hauler left the road, killing the driver and team leader Frank Brandt. You can read the article on Racing West as well as several local Plains, Montana newspapers.

We offer our deepest sympathy to the entire team. And God Speed to Frank.

Well, another one will die soon enough. What am I talking about you ask? Go ahead, ask. . .

I was reading a great article over on The MotorSports Soapbox. Remember way back when AT&T was going through all the court stuff against NASCAR over the name and logo change on the #31 car? Well, actually, they just ended that ordeal a little while ago, so it wasn’t “way back”. The end result was, AT&T settled out of court after a lengthy battle, agreeing that they could change the name and logo to the current one you see on the car and then exit the sport at the end of this season.

Well, now we get to go through it again. Only this time it’s with the #12 car of your 2008 Daytona 500 winner, Ryan Newman. See, Verizon is buying out Alltel. What this means is that the end for Alltel in NASCAR is soon approaching. And since the current contract with Sprint & NASCAR states that the Alltel sponsorship can remain in NASCAR as long as it is not renamed or re-branded, they will be forced out of the sport just like AT&T was.

Remember the days when NASCAR sponsorship included who ever wanted to sponsor a car? Now, it’s all about who you can force out of the sport leaving you as the lone brand. Pretty soon, we will start losing teams since they can’t find sponsors who are allowed to enter NASCAR. Then this whole “top-35″ debate won’t matter, since there won’t be 35 teams to worry about. Won’t that be a great day?