Saturday, July 20, 2002 - Park Jefferson Speedway
Heat - John started his heat race from the rear and would move quickly into 2nd place behind the #88 of Wally Wagner. Wagner and John would open up a very large margin over third place, and coast home easily to a 1-2 finish. John wouldn't challenge Wagner in the heat. We were fortunate to not have cut down a tire in the heat, the track was extremely tacky and the car laid over hard in the corners, with the right rear tire rubbing on the fender in every corner.
A Feature - John started 12th for tonight's A-main. He was patient on the start, as he was behind some pretty good cars, his patience paid off as the race was halted following the first lap, John had moved up to the 9th spot, and the car looked to be pretty strong. The track surprisingly had held quite a bit of moisture for the feature. On the restart, John was very fast and was positioning himself for a pass on the #z98 of Denny Johnson when the two got together with Johnson turning around and John's nose piece coming up in front of him. John came to the pits and we removed the nose piece, the right front wheel was slightly bent, but the field was ready to go green, and we sent him out without replacing the wheel. We hoped it would be a good call and the tire would hold air. John would restart 16th with 15 laps remaining. John moved through the field very patiently, taking the car wherever he wanted to go. He was up to 10th when Rich Hesse spun bringing out another caution and would go to the rear. On the restart John continued his move to the front. He was making a move to the inside of a couple cars on the front stretch when Mike Jensen and Mike Cooper got together, Cooper came down the track into John's passenger door. We were fortunate the contact was where it was if it was a foot or two back it would have turned John head on into the front stretch wall at nearly top speed. John amazingly saved the car and went into turn one in 5th position. After the resulting caution John would restart in 6th. Cooper was apparently confused, thinking John had played some part in causing the caution, and rammed John's right side under caution. A discussion with Cooper after the race revealed that he had indeed attempted to take John out under caution for some unknown reason. Quite surprising behavior from a rather experienced driver. On the following restart John felt a breakage in the drive train, and suffered a very severe vibration. He nursed the car along for a couple laps, remaining on the lead lap. When a caution came out he came to the pits, and we looked for the problem, it eventually revealed some damage to the transmission. Although it was causing a severe vibration it would run. We sent John back out to complete some additional laps with the hopes of picking up a few more spots if additional cars dropped out. John nursed the car over the final 4 laps, and would finish in 14th spot. It was very disappointing to come home 14th with a car that had clearly been capable of a top 3 finish.
Standings - Combined with a feature win by 3rd place Kyle Koster, our cushion between ourselves and 3rd place evaporated this week. Rich Hesse finished in 7th, and increased his margin to 60 points with 8 weeks remaining. John will hold onto 2nd place by a narrow 2 point margin over Koster. The poor finish will get us a higher starting position in the feature and heats over the next few weeks and we should be positioned for a strong charge in the coming weeks. |
