HayWire Racing’s BLOG

Well, this past weekend was a little rainy. That was ok though. We were not racing anyway.

We spent Saturday making some changes to the #29 Street Stock; we swapped a couple wheel offsets around, made a spring change in the rear, made a ride height adjustment in the rear, made some modifications to the front to allow more camber and found a pretty beat up upper control arm that required swapping out some bushings. Hopefully the stuff we did will make a difference.

We head back to the track this coming weekend for Donny to continue his run in the #29 Street Stock. We are down to just two points races left, so it’s officially “crunch-time”.

In some other team news – I understand that tomorrow will be the start of construction on the new “HayWire Motorsports World Headquarters”. That’s right, global domination starting in Graham, Washington!

Seriously though, huge thanks to Tommy for the major investment he is making on this thing to bring us all under a single roof.

Not a lot going on this week. I think the #29 Street Stock is ready to go for the next race. That one is not until next week. With the #68 Limited out we have a little down time right now.

Speaking of the #68 Limited. It appears that the steering linkage was bent during the first incident I got in and somehow ended up bound up and would not turn to the right. So I may have actually been trying to turn right when I saw the wreck, but the wheels wouldn’t go that way. That may explain why the car kept going straight as well. I do recall trying to turn right to go up and around it. Oh well, not much we can do now. I’m still sorting through everything to be honest. It’s been a long hard season with a lot of downs and no ups. Generally I can find something to hold my head high about and be proud of. But after the 4 races I attended this year, I’m not sure there was a high point. Honestly, my most fun moments came away from the track when I attended the car show and put the car on display or did the radio interviews. The ‘at the track’ stuff has been nothing short of a kick in the teeth all year.

I don’t really have an update, but I hear that the building materials for the new shop are arriving. Hopefully work will begin on that soon. We need it done so we can get the cars in there and actually have a place to work on them like a real race team. I’ll try to keep you tuned in to that as it develops.

As for this coming weekend, I think I might just take some time off and go ride my Harley a little.

Well, we had a rough night at the track.

First I have to thank my guys for the amazing work they did. I think we had one of the bets practice sessions ever in the final session. We must have made about a dozen changes during that 20 minute session. In the end the car was pretty good. Not amazing, but pretty solid and raceable. I was happy with it and was looking forward to the Main Event.

Our qualifying session was held in a group format with everyone on the track at the same time. Not my prefered method, but what do you do? So in the end I have no idea what time I ran in qualifying since they don’t post it unless you are the fastest time. that is just one of the MANY reasons I don’t like this group format.

The Main Event was going ok for a little while. We started in the back, so I must have been pretty slow in qualifying. I was able to stay with the field, so we couldn’t have been too bad. We had an early caution so I used the “cone” to gain some positions on the high side when we went back to green. When you are way at the back, you might as well roll the dice.  I started developing a brake problem shortly after that and it kept getting worse as the laps went on. Not sure what the deal was, but it wasn’t helping. After tangling with another car I think I knocked the toe out pretty bad. But the car was still running so we soldiered on. A little while later there was a big pile up in turn 2 just as I was setting my car into 1. I heard my spotter tell me “Wreck in two, go high” but I had already set the car in low. When I got on the bakes that issue jumped right up and bit me. The brakes locked up and stayed locked after I took my foot off the pedal. With the brakes locked, the car just slid right into the wreck. It hit pretty hard and tore up the whole front end. That ended our night, and my season.

With only 2 races left, one being too soon to fix the car in time for, we will be forced to just park it and try again next year. This will give us the whole winter to fix the car right and work out a couple other issues we seem to have with it.

Again, I have to thank my team for their hard work and dedication. I wish it had turned out better, they certainly deserved a solid finish. But we will be back with Donny and the #29 Street Stock in two weeks, so we aren’t totally done yet.

Well, it’s raceday for the #68 Toyota Camry again. It’s been a while since the last one.

We spent a long evening yesterday getting the car scaled after completing our repairs of the rear end. It’s been a long time since we had the #68 Toyota Camry at the track and I am looking forward to returning to the drivers seat. I’d like to come away from this one with a solid finish, but really I’d just take a finish at this point. But a top-5 would be pretty cool. Tommy says we will put the car in the tech lane when this one is over, that’s a podium finish. I like the way he thinks.

Don’t forget to stop by and say hi after the races. See you at the track.

Wow, that was a fun night.

We started our race day with a very hot and slick track in early practice. Donny was doing ok though. He continues to get better each week. After a little practice and a few adjustments, we stuck Tommy in the #29 car to get some more feedback. Tommy had the car runnign pretty good, he wasn’t really nay faster than Donny, but he felt the car as more “race-able”. After putting Donny back in it we learned that he likes the car a bit different than Tommy and we had to undo a few things for him to be more comfortable in it. So we learned something there.

Donny started his heat race from the pole and was doing a right fine job of running away with it, when all of a sudden, right after the half way point, the throttle linkage fell off. Donny showed some quick thinking and pulled out of the way before causing any issues, but the race way taken from him rather quickly.

The main event saw Donny starting last. After thinking about the setup, the track conditions and so on, we made some adjustments to the car that ultimately proved to be way off. The track did not change the way we thought it would, in fact, I think it may have gone the other way. In the end, we sent Donny out with a car that was way too loose to drive. In the end, he could not keep it pointed the right way and his night was ended early. Not one of our better calls, but even Jeter misses a fast ball every now and then.

So after a long, hot night, we headed home a bit deflated. But there’s always another race.