Saturday, August 17, 2002 - Park Jefferson Speedway
Heat - We arrived at the track ready to send Lady Luck down the road with our 2nd new tranny in 3 weeks in the car. John would start 3rd in his heat race and we were serious about a solid run tonight. When the green flag fell to start the heat, John hit the throttle and the car died. He would coast to the infield and park it for the heat. You've never seen such a look of dejection as that one that consumed the OK One Stop crew after the heat race. We had assumed it was another transmission failure, but when he got to the pits on the hook, we found out that the car had died due to ignition failure. After replacing the distributor we were ready to give it another shot in the feature.
A Feature - Had he been able to qualify for the feature from the heat, John would have started from the outside pole, but instead he would set out from the 19th spot. John's mental state at this point was obviously torn to shreds. He found himself wondering what he should expect to fail tonight. After a quick pep talk to remind him that he had to race it like he stole it, regardless of any impending mechanical failures he was good to go. Amazingly, so was the #1s Harris Modified! The car was a rocket, after spending a couple laps to get around the 57H of John Heins, John steadily picked off the cars in front of him at times several in a single lap. A 17th lap pass of Paul Hemmingson got John up to 7th place. I believe we've finally come to terms with our own Lady in Black!
Standings - Rich Hesse, Kyle Koster and Jimmy Cole would each finish in the top 5, but our 7th place finish would feel like a feature win after four weeks that dropped our point average from the highest to the 16th highest. John would move past Chuck into 4th place, trailing Jimmy Cole by 28 points with 4 points nights remaining. The positive thing is that John should be starting at the front of the feature field for the closing weeks, and with some luck we'll be able to climb back into the top 3. |
