Butler County Motorplex

Well, speedweek is over and we did about as well as we excpected, but not quite as well as we hoped. But that only partially matters, we all had a blast!

Osborne, MO

We had never been to this track before and it was a pretty nice track, and they kept it up pretty well. It still went dry slick by the end of the night, but it kept the cushion through the entire night night.

We missed hot laps due to some fuel system problems so we where not able to get on the track at all until our first heat. Turns out, that would have been a huge help! Although, probably not enough help as we would have needed. Turns out, a track with a cushion is an entirely different beast than the dry slick tracks in Colorado.

Rising City, NE

So, getting here turned out to be quite an adventure, we missed a turn and ended up on some unmaintained farm road that was really hilly and had about 5 inches of mud on the ground! We ended up doing some four wheeling (um, ok, actually, 2+4+4 = 10 wheeling with the truck and trailer hauling ass to keep momentum and sliding sideways over hills, it was probably a hell of a sight!

This was the second time that we made it to rising city (I like the city name better) AKA Butler County Motorplex, and it was quite a bit different that I remember! For some reason I remembered horrendously long strait aways and really tight corners. I would probably attribute this to the last time I was on this track was after I flipped the car in Lincoln, NE and was a bit worried about doing it again. (This isn’t fright mind you, its money and time. what a pain in the ass it was fixing the car in the Speedway Motor’s parking lot. Just so you know)

We missed the first heat, again do to fuel system problems… I think it was more like driver error (the car started and then stalled and probably would have started again if we got pushed off again)

So again, we ended up running the B-Main and trying to get by.  The track was really rough on the bottom and I stuck there, because that is how I know how to run

McCool Junction, NE

McCool Junction is an awesome and big speedway, and is super fast, one look at the track and we where pretty sure we couldn’t really do much here, being down on horsepower and all, apperently up to about 100 hp! But I sure tried my hardest. The first night we where there we ended up torching a drive shaft in the B-Main. Thankfully, we where close enough to Speedway Motors (raise your hand if you think I should get some cash from them for all mentions and got another drive shaft the next day. Oh boy, was that fun, it was so friggin hot and humid in the trailer while we swapped out the driveshaft and rear end.

They have this really funky out gate that the cars basically have to circle around and go backward on the track to exit out of turn two.

Oh, yeah- McCool junction had a free BBQ after the races, I thought that was the coolest thing ever.

Belleville, KS

Well, finally made it to the Belleville Midget Nationals, we didn’t expect to do very well on such a big track but we wanted to go, just so we could say we did. We ended up running at the back of the B-Main both nights and almost made it to the A on saturday night, but alas, I wasn’t able to hold the position.

Apparently, a lot of people say they get lost on Belleville, since it is almost perfectly round and I can understand why, its a monster of a track and you can’t really see from one end to the other when your on it.

I think all in all, I managed to get quite the learning experience from speed week and got a lot more comfortable running up high and along the wall. That has never been much of an advantage in most of the tracks I have ever run, so I have never really run there. I gotta say though, running flat out at Belleville has got to be one of the coolest experiences of my life!

~Scott