CLASS RACER FORUM - Thank you to all the Racers who attended the Dave Stine Race

So it’s been a little over 24 hours since we closed out the 2nd Annual Dave Stine Memorial & .90 Nationals / Top Shootout event at Maple Grove and handed out some nice winners purses to all the champs in 6 classes.

The beginning of the event didn’t start out the way we had hoped during the high roller race in which we made the decision to cancel to allow the track to adjust and come around from some serious rain in the earlier part of the week, just glad Keith was ok and the car didn't take too much damage and should be repairable. It was a pure gut punch to me to see someone like Keith who I call a good friend (even though we chirp at each other....hahaha) mess up his car. Working on solutions to fix the problem is what we had to do in the long run and not send anyone else down the track.

The crew of Rob Robb, Shane & Kyle spent till midnight Friday scraping the track and I was up at 5am doing my event prep and walking the track on Sat Morning. The track at the Grove is always a little tricky due to it being all concrete surface and the crazy weather swings the place has being in the valley puts it into a tricky place to sometimes prep but, we knew to make it work you needed to keep adding rubber. I try to take a lot of what I have learned over the years from running events at Cecil & Atco to offer suggestions and figure out solutions to make it a smooth fix for the racers.

Saturday started a little rough as the first few pairs of SC were having some issues. We worked as a team and found what needed to be done. Kyle even jumped into his own car to make a test pass down both lanes to see if there were any issues after the prep. With us now a little over 2- 2 1/2 hours behind the schedule we decided on 1 and go for all classes which I knew didn’t make some people happy but, I’d rather get a race done then make time runs all day and not finish. We all worked as a team, Dana, Jared from D1, Ashley, Kathy & Dave kept feeding me cars at the point (bottom of the lanes is called the point) and we kept the lanes full of cars and going down the track. We’re there small glitches in the event, of course but, where we were at 11am and where we ended up at 8:43pm was quite remarkable to say the least. Thanks once again to Dana, Jared, Dave, Kathy & Ashley for all their help. To the Maple Grove crew, thanks for all the effort and hard work you put into things yesterday to get us to the finish line. To all the sponsors that jumped in to this little dream of Jeff Stricker & Myself to honor the life of Dave…thank you!! We needed you more than ever this year and you stepped up to help us out, we hope we made you proud and you’ll continue to support us on the near future. Last but definitely not least - THE RACERS!! You guys filled the place, almost 250 entries for R1…would I have liked to have seen more, of course but, weather on Sunday, previous plans and gas prices might have swayed your decision. Either way we stuck to our guns and paid out what was on the flyer even if we were short just a little in a couple of classes. I heard the chirping on some posts and message boards that a “Big Dollar .90 Race” would be a colossal failure and it would be a waste of time because it’s all “Wally Racers” but, I think me, and my team did a dam good job of proving that wrong.

So the next question that I was asked is when is the 3rd annual? I can’t tell you, Jeff & I have to sit down and map out a strong plan to make it all work again. I just have to say to the racers who missed the event, just go on Facebook and look at all the positive comments on how much fun people had. A sportsman race for THE RACER, BBQ, Bands on both night and a good payout for less than you would spend at a National!

So once again, thanks for attending and hope you all had fun! See most of you in a few days back at MG, I don’t know if we’ll have as much fun as we did this past weekend ��.