STUDS Racing, Inc. Update

The past few weeks have been quite eventful for the STUDS Racing Team. The racing has been going strong in the Nocturnal Adrenaline Cup Mod, although I haven't posted a Top 5 since my Lowe's run weeks ago.

But big news filled the stables throughout the race shop as I decided to throw my hat into the Craftsman Truck Mod to run the Midnight Thunder Superspeedway Series on Friday nights.


The #4 Dodge Hemi "Grab Life By The Horns" Truck made its debut a couple of weeks ago to run the fictitious Zen Joltis Superspeedway, a 5.5-mile qual-oval.

My first impressions of the track: I simply love it. It's wide, it's fast, and the close, tight-knit racing really makes it fun.

Unforunately, the #4 Dodge didn't quite make it to the end of the race. I crashed out on a Lap 16 incident that took out two other cars -- a wreck that was completely my fault -- and I really felt stupid over it because it was simply a dumb mistake.

I was actually in 3rd place at the time, leading the outside row of cars. I knew the inside line was fast, and then going through a corner, I figured there was room behind this one particular truck -- but there wasn't. I ended up coming down on another truck and I literally bounced off and went straight for the wall. At speeds at nearly 205 miles per hour, it was a spectacular wreck.


I "barrel-rolled" along the top of the fence line before coming down hard on the track. On the picture at right, you're looking through another driver's cockpit view as you see my #4 Dodge Truck "flying" through the air. Believe it or not, I flew over this driver, cleared him completely. I view I could show you this video -- it's really something to see. After I cleared this guy, I flew over another driver. Luckily for me, I only took out two drivers, but those were not from direct contact, but from those losing control of their vehicles when they were trying to avoid me as I pinballed through the air.

Just last Friday night I started my second start at a figure-eight track called the "Eight-Bowl," a steeply-banked superspeedway. This time, I did finish, but I did get caught up in a minor accident (not my fault) that gave me some rear spoiler damage.

Tonight, we're back at yet another fictitious track called Riki Speedway, which is very comparable to Daytona International. The tri-oval and backstrech are both steeply banked, making control a little bit harder.

As for the Noctural Adrenaline Cup Series, we ran Chicagoland a couple of weeks ago. The #66 Sony Vaio was stout during practice, but I got a little carried away during the early portions of a green-flag run and spun out early in the race. In the process of trying to correct my car, I hit a wrong button on my keyboard and disconnected.

After an off-week, last night we ran Pocono. Right away, I thought that I wasn't going to have much fun running the odd-triangular-shaped track, but after the tires came in, I had some fun. The track itself is flat, with three different straights and three different banked curves. I did manage to finish in the Top 5 (on the lead lap, for the first time in the Noctural Adrenaline Cup Series).

Recently, I've been testing at Indianapolis -- yes, the famed "Brickyard" -- for the upcoming NA race on Thursday night. As it turns out, I will not be running the race there due to other committments (high school baseball playing for the Section championship).

I also wish I could put more race photos on here, but for some reason, Blogger won't let me.