Friday is Raceday !

That's me there in front of my car, may name is Leonard Ripper, I drive the # 222 sprint car. This is last years car (2000) all cleaned up and ready to race at Lernerville on Friday night.

We've done a major overhaul for the year 2001, including rebuilding or replacing just about everything on the car to make it as competitive for this year as possible. The color scheme hasn't changed but just about everything else has. We hope to be able to run every race this year, provided we can keep the wheels on the ground and the wing in the air, parts are expensive so crashing is not a viable option. We like to keep it as straight as possible for as long as we can to keep operating costs to a minimum. Not an easy task when you consider the assortment of driving styles on the track at any given time. It takes a sharp eye and quick responce to remain in one piece for the entire race !

Update 06-03-01: So far the every race thing would have panned out except for the fact that we have been rained out for three weeks running. It's been kind of a wet spring this year. We are hoping to run on Wed. the 6th but it's looking like rain on that date too. Keep your fingers crossed ! On the bright side, the car is still in one piece and we only had a few minor parts break. We haven't had any real good finishes so far this year but we have tried some different setups that didn't pan out well so we'll probably go back to some of last years and see what the does for us. So far so good.

Update 07-05-01: We are now starting to expand our horizons and try for some better racing with this car. We have moved to Sharon Speedway in Hubbard, Ohio on Friday nights, unless they aren't running sprints then it's back to Lernerville. The car just seems to work better at Sharon so we are trying to stick to that, with an occasional Sunday night at Knox thrown in for good measure. So far Sharon has been pretty good to us, with 1 top 5 and a come from the back to 8th, which was pretty impressive when you consider the competition!

Update 07-27-01: Broke the coupling from the axle to the rear end at the start of the heat race, had to start last in the feature after repairing the car. Things just seem to break for us for the last couple of weeks, I'm begining to believe it's just so we have something to do. Rip did manage to finish eighth in the feature and moving up fast on the front runners, we needed a caution to close things up and I belive we could have finished in the top 5. The car was working exceptionally well tonite so I think it could have been a really good night if we would have gone without our usual setbacks. All in all it wasn't a total washout ! Rip made a very impressive run coming from way back and actually catching the front pack before the race was over!

More later.