For the first time since the Sizzler we had a return of ‘Whelen Weather’ this past weekend. Although the climax of this weekend’s festivities seemed quite anti-climatic, all-in-all this was quite a successful effort for our beloved tour’s title sponsor. Phil Kurze put together a weekend to join Whelen’s employees, who have behaved as a family for many years, with their new family, all of us who are a part of NASCAR’s oldest division.

All through last week I was concerned how well the Whelen Open House would be supported by the teams. The teams knew that this was important but with the WMT schedule as crammed with travel and mid-week events as it is, how many days can a car owner expect volunteer crewmembers to take off from work? I hoped for about a dozen teams to show up and figured that only about half of that would. I was surprised to find that over a dozen cars made it to the event.

The Open House included regular guided tours of the Whelen manufacturing facilities. Members of the public, our fellow competitors and officials alike were lead off on foot ten to a dozen at a time. I was disappointed when our guide told us that the venture would probably last about twenty minutes. I kind of figured we wouldn’t get a chance to see much in that short amount of time.

As it turned out the tours lasted about an hour. Perhaps the guide felt that if he had told us it would take that long that some of the people would opt not to participate. The tours were well organized, informative and enjoyable.

Over the years I have had the opportunity to tour numerous industrial plants. The Whelen facilities were without a doubt the most technically advanced I have ever visited. I was amazed how comfortable, quiet and clean the whole place was. Many of the folks who joined me on our tour were impressed with how well all of the employees got along with one another and how smooth the production operated.

The Whelen Corporation prides itself on their ability to be mostly self reliant. From the capacity to manufacture their own plastics (in their New Hampshire facility), to producing their own packaging materials to the fact that they have secondary and tertiary back-up power generation to assure that the plant remains in operation in the event of any type of power emergency or weather phenomenon, Whelen showed us the kind of leading edge company that is our primary benefactor. In addition, no employees have ever been laid off at Whelen, despite the fact that they continue to add automation and robotic assembly to their production.

In addition to their impressive production folks, Whelen keeps specialized staff on hand for other things as well. Their maintenance personnel build their plants and maintain the adjacent airport. Whelen purchased the airport when it went into bankruptcy.

Needless to say, everyone who did attend the Open House was thoroughly impressed. Phil Kurze was very pleased with the way that this event came off and is already looking forward to doing this again next season. I hope that twice as many teams show up next year so that more of our competitors will be able to boast of the great company that is our beloved tour’s title sponsor.

Saturday started off like normal at Waterford. As I approached the booth normally used for press credentials, it was closed. When I asked about credentials by their main sign-in one of the Waterford staff told me, “You gotta go to the other side!” At the back gate I was told to go back to the spot I had originally approached. Several Tour officials, who had taken the Whelen tour with me on Friday, wanted to try to make alternate arrangements for my access.

I didn’t want anyone to do that. Amie had gone out of her way to insure that Waterford had me on their list. I certainly didn’t want anyone from the track thinking that they made provisions for me and that I had blown them off. Reverend Don Rivers came to the rescue at that point. He and the Hodges had been through much the same shenanigans. Don told me, “Jump in!” and we were back across to the main sign-in again.

I know this stuff bores everyone to tears. I just wish that they had had the list there when I did eventually sign in. I would like Terry Eames to have known that I actually was in attendance.

With the Tour teams parking on the unpaved North end of the Speedbowl facility plywood was the order of the day. I was actually more interested in finding shade. Saturday was quite hot, and staying out of the sun was paramount for my survival of this event.

I want to thank the various teams that helped me take cover including the Brady Bunch, Ralph Solhem, Art Barry and Roger Hill’s Hillbilly gang who among others all took turns keeping me cool. I also ducked out of the sun at the WMT and Racing Electronics trailers.

Speaking of the NASCAR WMT trailer, there was a swarm of activity there for a few hours. The generator in the WMT malfunctioned Saturday and it seemed to take forever for the officials to get it going. The best suggestion that I heard was that they should have tried to push start it.

Qualifying was incredibly tight. The cars that made it in on time were separated by less than four tenths of a second and fourth through twenty-fifth were separated by less than a quarter of a second. My heart goes out to teams like the #58 of Kevin Goodale. Kevin missed the show by four thousandths of a second.

The usual suspects were at the top of the speed charts throughout practice. Waterford is one of those tracks that teams seem to either hit or miss. There is very little middle ground there. If a racecar there is fast is usually pretty close to perfect. If a car is a little off at the Speedbowl, that handling issue usually leads to the handling deteriorating progressively further.

That is because the track is one of the few on our circuit that is driven nearly as a circle with very limited amounts of transition. If a car is tight, it is usually tight all the way around the track and that tight condition only leads to that car getting progressively tighter. The same could be said for a car that is loose, that that condition usually will only lead to that car getting looser.

Consequently Waterford is one of the tracks that the WMT frequents where we have seen a driver ‘stink up the show’. I remember a couple of them, including one where Reggie Ruggiero nearly lapped the entire field. Saturday these conditions lead to a good night for Donny Lia.

Lia, who was third fastest in qualifying, drew the pole in the redraw. Donny was aggressive on restarts and led wire to wire. The top groove never seemed to come in and Donny used that to his advantage. Most of the passing among the folks behind the leader occurred on restarts and that only served to amplify Lia’s ability to set sail.

Once Lia was able to get a lead of any consequence he altered his line a little bit and drove away from the rest of the field. Whoever was in second didn’t seem to matter, as the race progressed most of the other competitors seemed to have to worry as much or more about the driver behind them than the car in front of them. It was a freight-train kind of race and there was no room for a caboose on the #18.

Several of our regulars had fantastic showings. Steve Whitt wound up holding on for a fine fifth place finish after starting third and dashing to second early. Tommy Cravenho finished seventh in his first chance to fill in for Mike Stefanik who was in Holland, NY for the Busch North race. By the way, congratulations to Mighty Mike for putting a whooping on the BNS field at Holland. Matt Hirschman, Greg Shivers and Doug Coby soldiered on to top-ten finishes.

Things didn’t go so well for everyone. Ken Barry, Jim Storace and Dave Etheridge all got stuck in the front straightaway fence in separate incidents. I didn’t see exactly how each of them occurred but safe to say that Barry was none to happy with James Civali and Dave Etheridge may have crossed Rick Fuller off of his Christmas card list.

As the race was coming to its’ conclusion, Jerry Marquis and defending champion, Tony Hirschman got together as they battled for fourth spot. Marquis took the spot. Hirschman spun, bringing out the caution. The caution flew after the white flag had been displayed. Hirschman rejoined the field in time to salvage a twelfth place finish.

Subsequent to the end of the race there was some confusion. Lia’s car had come to a stop and needed to be pushed to victory lane. This raised suspicion of the WMT officials who swarmed over the #18 in post-race inspection. Officials exhaustively inspected the wiring of Lia’s car.

I suspect that the WMT officials were looking for tell tale signs of a traction control device. As the results stood when the #18 was loaded, it is quite apparent that they found nothing out of the ordinary. I won’t point fingers at any of the competitors.

One way to police that type of device would be to use ignition boxes similar to the ones that are currently being used by the competitors in the ARCA RE/MAX Series. My understanding is that in addition to the fact that these ignition boxes are supplied to the ARCA teams at random is that they include a type of device that allows officials to review how the ignition performed during race conditions. Thus if a team were to be using some type of device to usurp these boxes, Series officials would be able to detect its’ use promptly.

Traction control devices are available and the fact some teams have said that they have used them in the past only escalates the controversy that some teams might currently be using one. Until the sanctioning body can enforce regulations to eliminate the use of these types of devices, the rumors of their use will be rampant. Without that type of intervention the rumors of impropriety will only escalate further.

Next Sunday the WMT competitors will return to Stafford Springs to attempt to complete the Haynes 150 that was postponed from Memorial Day weekend. We are looking forward to bringing everyone live updates from that event. We have enlisted the help of Bruce Boucher from Speedway Scene to call the action. I look forward to seeing everyone at Jennerstown on Saturday, July 9th.