June 4th,
2011
6/4/11:
LACROSS ROLLS THE DICE AT POCONO
After
a very good qualifying effort (career best 20th),
the team was hopeful for a top 15 finish on the
lead lap on race day. With the weather looking
very much rain, the crew immediately started
thinking about pit strategy to be prepared for the
likelihood that the race would be shortened due to
rain.
Just
before the pre-race ceremony, Bill Gerhart stopped
by to recruit someone to replace his rear tire
carrier. I told him that John Traphagen had the
most experience on our team, so Billy drafted him
to be the rear tire carrier for the famous Lucas
Oil No. 5. With John heading out to play with the
"big boys", we drafted Kevin Warren to
fill in for him. This filled out our crew as
follows:
Bob
Thurston, Jr as acting crew chief for Chuck Miller
who was unable to make this race Aaron Cross, car
chief and jackman Wade Camenga, front tire changer
Kevin Warren, front tire carrier Todd Caufield,
rear tire changer Bob Cincotta, rear tire carrier
Eric Bomboy, gasman Dana Camenga, catch can Duane
Canfield, spotter Grant Cross, pit sign
Once
the green flag flew, we were able to move up some
position to about 15th. The race ran under green
conditions until about lap 20. At that point, we
had just been lapped and missed the lucky dog
award by 1 spot. So when the leaders pitted and
Maryeve Dafualt got the waive around, we were left
in front of the pack as the last car on the lead
lap. Because the weather was looking so
threatening, we only had one caution lap to make
the decision to come in for gas, or stay out and
hope for another caution to get the lucky dog
award (remember our goal was to finish on lead
lap). When I came around the 4th turn, the
consensus was to stay out, so I did. We had the
next 17 laps of caution to agonize about whether
we had made the right decision.
Finally
on lap 37, ARCA put out the red flag and held the
field on pit road until the weather conditions
improved. After several minutes of waiting, we
finally went back to green flag racing, with us
hoping for a quick caution. At lap 40 (halfway
official completion), there was no caution to be
seen and we ran until lap 46 when I called on the
radio "coming in next lap...oh wait a minute,
I am out now". This happened just as I drove
past the pit entrance, so I had to try to coast
all the way around back to the pits for
gas...which did not work and i ended up stopping
at the exit of turn 3 and causing a caution.
Unfortunately we lost several laps getting pushed
into the pits and getting gas to rejoin the field.
On
the restart, it became obvious that the fog was
too thick to safely continue and ARCA was forced
to throw the checker flag a lap 51. We end up in
23rd position, well short of our goal, but we were
not discouraged by our attempt to beat the
weather. Unfortunately, the weather came about 5
laps too late for our strategy to succeed. Oh
well, we all had fun trying.
I
want to thank the whole crew as well as the
following supporters:
Cummings
Auto Machine Bestdeck Quadraflex Mojophotos and
D2K Graphics
We
are looking forward to our chance to do it all
again in Pocono in August. |