FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 4, 2008 In his first-ever appearance at Thunder Road Speedbowl, Ricky Wolf had a competitive car following Saturday's practice session, but Sunday's misfortunes led to a day cut short. Ricky recalls the weekend's events... "A solid practice day on Sat., turned into misfortune quite quickly on Sunday .... After a solid afternoon of practice on Saturday, April 3, we had a car that we were confident would be able to make the show and run competitively in Sunday's 150-lap feature event, the Merchants Bank 150. After the two practice sessions on Sunday morning, and scuffing in the new tires, our lap times were in the low 13 second range, and very competitive. A good draw saw us lined up fifth in the second qualifying race. They were taking the top four cars from each of the 15-lap qualifying races, and things were looking up until a spin off of turn four into the infield saw us re-starting at the rear of the field, eventually ending with an eighth place finish. In the Consolation race our luck was not much better, and we were spun out by another competitor early in the race, which relegated us to starting at the back of the field in the "B" feature. The car felt like it was back under us early on, and we were able to make some forward progress, and miss a few early wrecks until the big one came. A few competitors in front of us got hung up pretty badly, with two cars making heavy contact with the front stretch wall, leaving everybody behind them scrambling for space. We avoided the initial mess fairly well, but ultimately got tagged by another car after it made contact with the wall, and rebounded into us as we sat on the front stretch. The contact made with the right front of our car left us with a fairly heavily damaged racer and a flat right front tire. The pit crew did a great job of getting the car back on track without losing a lap, but the car would not turn in the middle of the corners very well at all, and rather than risk further damage to ourselves, or anybody else it was decided to call it a day. The car was definitely good enough for us to qualify for this race. It was a huge let down not making the 150-lap main event. Despite the strong efforts of the crew all weekend long it was just not meant to be this day. We would like to send out our congratulations to teammate Bobby Dragon for qualifying in the show. Bobby and crew worked hard all day, and stayed in the hunt with some of the best the Tour has to offer. Thunder Road is a very tough little track. Many lessons were learned, and we will be even better when we get back there at the end of this month, looking for a little redemption." |
