When the garage door closed on Sunday June 3rd, the decision had been made that the Moose Team wouldn’t make the trip up along the coast to the USAC West Coast 360 race at Santa Maria. But when you leave Laurie alone with her thoughts anything can happen. By Sunday evening all
Plans had changed and Chris, Jake and Tom worked to get the 360 ready to race, instead of prepping it to wait patiently in the garage for it’s next show.
With Santa Maria running 7 classes and pit gate opening at 10 – Tom and Laurie loaded up Friday night and was on the road at 7 am… what happened to sleeping on in the weekends?
21 cars on hand for the 360’s first trip to Santa Maria of the year. Temps were gonna make it and awesome night for racing, as daytime highs were approx. 68 degrees and the overcast for evening was 48, although don’t think it really got that chilly. Kudos to the gentleman that prepped the 1/3 of a mile clay track, as the 30 main offered drivers the choice of circling the dirt either high or low and a few smack in the middle.
Let’s back up a bit to qualifying – pulling a late pill to race against the clock – Jake tripped the timing clock off with a 13.4741, 2nd quick. Congrats to Shannon Mcqueen who claimed her 1st Woodland Auto Display quick time of the year! Let’s line up the 2nd Heat – Max Adams and Cody Majors on the front row, Jake and Carter would be row 2. When 2 attempts for a green produced the front row stomping the pedal before the cone, the front row was sent back to row 2, putting Jake on the outside of row 1. And there he stayed for the 8 heat race laps. Heat 1 was won by Bernal, Heat 2 Jake, and Heat 3 Richard VanderWeerd.
Winner of Heat 3 pulls a pill determining what the inversion will be for the Main Event – bingo, finally a break – front row outside, with Richard VanderWeerd on the inside. Drop the green flag and it was Jake getting the jump and for 29 laps never looked back. Coming down for what was to be the checkered, the 2nd place car got tangled a bit with a lap car, mind you the 2nd place car kept going, the lap car was still moving, had not come to stop, the checkered flag waved – BUT, apparently on the radio to drivers, it was called yellow -- with people in the pits and stands voicing congrats – everyone found out that there was now 1 lap to go. Restart, the 92 Moosemobile stumbled a bit, Ryan made his slider and the real checkered flag waved for Ryan – wondering why the stumble, the guys found out that earlier in the race, like lap 2 there had been a fuel leak – during a yellow Jake was able to tighten the line, but in the mean time, the 92 had lost some fuel and was running on fumes, that 1 extra lap not only presented a charging Ryan, but the Moosemobile on empty.
Congrats to Ryan and the JFM team --- Ryan is definitely one hek of a driver !!
Moose Night is up next for the team at Perris Auto Speedway June 24. Just the Moose’s way of thanking all the fans for supporting the sport we all love. Hope to see everyone there.