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| 2001 Race Results |
| Wednesday, May 30, 2001 - Buena Vista Raceway (Alta, Iowa) Heat - Returning to Alta for the first time in a couple of years, it was a cold damp night, and the races got underway with John starting 7th in his heat race, and battling at times with Ricky Stephan and Jason Briese. John had a pretty good run going for the first time out on the McCreary's in the 2001 Harris. The car ran well, and John had made a move past Stephan and another car for the 3rd position going into turn 3 on the final lap, but he pushed going into the corner and gave back both positions, John finished 5th in his heat, we were happy with the car's performance, but would need to loosen it up before the feature. Unfortunately, that opportunity would not come this night. During intermission a light rain came, they made an attempt to get the track rolled back in when the rain let up, but it resumed and the decision was made to postpone the features to the following week, June 6, and run double features that night. Although we hadn't planned to return to Alta until June 27, we made the decision to take advantage of the opportunity to log a lot of laps on the McCreary's in the double features on June 6. Wednesday, June 6, 2001 - Buena Vista Raceway (Alta, Iowa) Makeup Feature - John would start 15th in the postponed feature. The race got off to a slow start being halted for incidents twice in the opening 3 laps. Once they got racing, John was steadily moving up in the field. He had moved up into the 8th position before getting tied up in someone else's incident. Two cars got together in the middle of one and two, John was unable to get around them and came to a stop in front of the cars, making light contact with one of the cars that spun, then was hit from behind by the spinning car of Ron Beckstrom who was unable to get his car stopped. The engine stalled while John was sandwiched between the two cars, once he was able to get the car started he was able to drive away, but after the caution had come out. John came to pit road as he had some concerns about his front suspension and would be restarting in the rear anyway. The steering sector was bent, and the crew was able to pull it away, and send him back out onto the track. He would restart 17th with only six laps down and 14 remaining. Over the following laps John raced hard and really started to get a handle on the track. He was again picking off competitors moving up to 12th before another caution came out with 4 laps remaining. During that caution, John noticed that the car had gotten hot, and took the car to the pits. With the high attrition rate in the race, I believe John was scored in approximately 14th position. After the contact with the cars we spent our time between the first feature and the heat races repairing the front suspension, giving no attention to the engine. When he fired the car to go out for the heat race (which he would have started from the outside pole) the car was billowing smoke out the exhaust with the unmistakeable scent of antifreeze. It appeared that a head gasket had gone out, so we loaded it up for the night and enjoyed the opportunity to watch some very good dirt track racing. |