May 28, 2009 - Four night racing weekend kicks off with Jacob taking another 2nd place finish at 81 Speedway.  We continue to see Jacob learning from week to week.  He handles the car very well and can drive a very consistent line.  The evening was nice - no wrecks, no controversy.  Jacob said he had fun.  Done.

Friday on to Hays for another relatively easy, fun evening - with one fairly major problem and one bad call.  The major problem occurred on our way there when the bearing went out on the trailer wheel.  Not fun.  Big problem.

The fun part came seeing Matthew's feature article in the Hays Daily News.  The front page had the thumbnail of Matthew's car with the teaser "Racing in session; Teen driver happy school's out for the summer Page A8".  Grandma Effie said she saw this and was shaking hard as she flipped to page 8.  "School's out, racing in session for Crowell" was the title with a large color photo of Matthew leading BJ in the last race.  Of course, everyone got to pick on Matthew about that.  It was a great article and everyone commented on it to us.  That was a lot of fun.  Grandpa Brandt was in Texas and heard about it.  Grandma & Grandpa Crowell were in eastern Kansas and heard about it.  We tried to pick up enough copies for everyone.

In the pits, I was fired three times before hot laps even started.  It was all in good fun, but in my defense, even Uncle Trev had trouble running that jack later that night.

The bad call happened in the feature when Matthew was set for a top five finish and was spun out by another car.  The officials thought it was Matthew's fault and put him in the back.  After the race, the other driver came over to Matthew and apologized asking him why he didn't get his spot back because it was clearly his fault.  Like all sports, the officials can't see everything.  Our only good side now had a big dent in the rear quarter panel. Oh - but the best part was Matthew still managed to drive back to an 8th place finish!  He was extremely disappointed as he knew he had a top five car.  I was extremely proud that he could make up that many places and drive clean doing it.  It was amazing to watch.

Saturday we travel to Minneapolis where Matthew starts out the night winning his heat race.  This means we go straight to the A-Feature.  With 30 cars in the field, you have absolutely no idea what a relief it is to not have to do the B.  What is really cool is another driver video taped it and put it on You Tube, so you can see his win here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLVz8l-fZGM

In the B, in the first turn of the first lap, most of the field is taken out by a bad driver.  I was so glad we were not in that!  Unfortunately, the A looked a lot like the B before long.  In the middle of the race, there was a big crash coming out of turn four with a pack of cars.  Matthew had been running in the top seven switching between 5, 6 and 7 spots as he tried to move forward.  When the wreck started, I thought he was through it as I saw the wreck happen and he dove around it and truly needed about one more second.  Instead, one of the other cars in the wreck came up from behind on his driver's side to push him straight in to the wall.  His car wouldn't restart and he was pushed off the track.

The pit area was full of cars from the crash as they all try to make repairs and get back out before it goes green.  Since Matthew was against the wall, he was the last one to be taken off the track and I saw Steve and a half a dozen other guys jump on the car pulling off the hood to find the problem.  Steve sees the starter wire is pulled and he "John Wayne's it" holding it in place while Matthew restarts the car.  If you don't understand that, let me explain more in a minute.  Steve yells at Matthew not to kill it and Matthew makes it back out for the restart.  While others in the wreck get their spot back, Matthew is stuck in the back again!  ARGHHH!

He is driving up through the field and gets knocked off the track again and is not able to keep it running.  This time, Steve is ready with a pair of gloves.  When he is attaching the starter, he said you could smell the leather gloves like a cow getting branded.  Yes, that is how hot it was and Steve has two pretty good burns from the first round.  I am not sure he feels it until later.

Matthew makes the restart again and again, he starts in the back.  This is when it gets interesting because I watched him move up to the 10th position, but the scoring tower doesn't change.  I figure the transponder quit working during the wreck.  Somehow, he drives that thing up to a 9th place finish!

After the race, drivers are coming up to talk to Matthew and he laughs and says, "That didn't go as planned."  They start assessing the damage.  Broken spindle, bent tire rod, wheel is bent, front brackets are bent ... seems everything is bent but they can fix it all before the next race tomorrow night.  A driver shows Matthew the video he shot from his race. 

Matthew picks up his check and it shows a 15th place finish.  Well, of course, that was the last straw and let's just say his parents were a little ill-tempered.  Two nights of little sleep coupled with all the damage and bad calls just got to us.  But we were quick to calm down and took a trip up to the crow's nest seeing their computer layout first hand.  Very impressive.  They found the problem very quickly and corrected Matthew's finish.  We need to learn to stand up for ourselves more often and not wait until it was at a boiling point.  Easier said than done.

Minneapolis did a nice highlight video from the evening.  Only 3 minutes long and you see a lot of that orange 2C in it (I counted six).  Check it out at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAb0cAuUvLg&feature=channel

And this is just Matthew's story from Minnie.  I can go on and on as there was a lot of drama that night in the pits.  But some things are just better forgotten.  Time to move on to Colby.

It is a beautiful Sunday evening.  Grandma Effie and Grandpa Brandt arrive with Arby's which is a welcome change from track food on night number four!  Races are all going well.  I thought it was going to be a caution free A Feature there for a little bit.  It wasn't, but there also wasn't any real drama and we had no damage!  Matthew finished in 6th place after a lot of passing.  Just one spot shy of his goal.  Beautiful evening and everything ended early.

Next week we are back to Minneapolis and then on to WaKeeney.