This week’s missive begins with a somber note of remembrance. We learned about the passing of our dear friend and publisher Lou Cady this weekend last season. Polly Reid and I were informed at the Modified Auxiliary Picnic. Lou had come to the same picnic in 2003 and met so many folks. I miss our phone calls, our chats about things outside of racing, most of all I miss Lou’s kind and generous spirit. I think he would be proud of what we all have done in the past year to advance the site that was his passion.

I didn’t fill up before I left for Connecticut this time. I wanted to take advantage of the lower gas prices off of Long Island. The 7 AM boat got me to the track in plenty of time to catch practice. One thing I was really glad to see was that the Barry team had returned to the Tour after their family’s tragedy.

Time trials went smoothly and Tony Hirschman took down the pole…again. Carl Pasteryak had an impressive lap that wound up ninth fastest. Captain Carl drew the pole for Sunday’s event in the redraw.

I stayed at the place where you’re supposed to be smarter for staying in Auburn. Once again it was proven that the smart anomaly fails to have a cumulative effect on the hotel’s staff. When I entered the room I had been given, I noticed that the bed hadn’t been made. Then I noticed someone’s luggage in the room. I got another room and it all worked out.

The Modified Auxiliary Picnic was a blast. It was there that I saw Gracie Ryan for the first time in quite a while. It was great to hear that she is back in the swing and plans on going to Loudon as well.

Back before the beginning of the season, the Auxiliary had planned on the raffle being limited to a small number of more expensive prizes in order to make that part of the event less time consuming. Apparently there had been complaints that the raffle went on for too long last year.

The raffle went on about as long this year as a number of people including our own racechaser donated a large number of collectibles that were given away. Chaser’s son sat next to me during the raffle and won a lot of dad’s stuff back. I think he won four or five of the first dozen things given away.

If one wants to help out, they buy some tickets. It’s fun to watch everyone sorting through all of the tickets to see if they have a winner. I imagine it quite similar to playing bingo. It looked like there were a thousand tickets in front of me even though it was just over a hundred. I won some garb and so did a number of other people with varying amounts of carnival tickets in multiple colors strewn across the picnic tables.

Kevin ‘Guru’ Reardon told me “to the victor go the spoils.” I told him that he was close; to Vicki go the spoils. It was great to watch all of the children participate in the whole process from drawing the tickets to holding up and giving away the prizes.

I got up at six the next morning for reasons I alluded to in last week’s missive. Shortly thereafter I was back to sleep in my ice-cold hotel room. No sleep deprivation this weekend.

I got a chance to talk with Charles Kepley of C&C at the track Sunday. He’s got some really big plans for the North-South Shootout™. That event is scheduled for November 4th & 5th at Concord Motorsports Park.

Allow me to offer a tip to those who are still spinning their way through Cup mania. The Cup doesn’t really talk. Please don’t ask it questions. I’ll be happy to tell you what I think it would be thinking. The silence of responses from people who posed questions to the Cup this weekend was deafening. I just want to limit some folk’s disappointment.

The Sunoco 300 got underway and as in most cases where this has been a full 300-lap affair, there were relatively few cautions. Early in the event it appeared as though the drivers were all driving with a lot of patience and courtesy. We didn’t even get our first caution until lap eighty-five, more than a quarter of the way through the race.

One thing that concerns me is the possibility of fire on pit road. This is not normally something that we worry about on a regular basis. Most of the shorter pit stop races find teams electing to start with enough fuel to complete the event. Even when fuel is added to a WMT car, it’s normally about five gallons. Teams had to dump full cans at this race without the protection of fire personnel we have had at Loudon or Martinsville.

The race progressed through varying pit strategies with some teams choosing to pit earlier than others. . I held my breath for a moment just past halfway as there were a bunch of very fast cars that restarted towards the rear of the field shod with fresh Hoosiers bearing down on some cars that were racing for position with one another but seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were about to be steamrolled.

The moment passed and everyone went back to racing against cars at or around their level shortly thereafter. I felt more comfortable about the fire issue too once it appeared that most of the teams had taken fuel which was about lap two hundred. Most of the teams had made their beds and now it was time to race them.

I watched for nearly thirty laps the #48 car seem ordinary. Hirschman had been able to put his car wherever he wanted on the track through most of the race. At that point I thought he was just sitting in ninth and eighth positions waiting for all of the guys in front of him to burn up their tires for an easy assault later on the front of the field. Tony’s comments later inferred that the last set of tires didn’t quite match as well as the ones that had been on the car earlier.

It seemed as though the #77 was faster than the #18 and the #18 was faster than the #13 as we got into the closing laps. As they say, catching a driver is easy; passing them is another thing. The three-way battle upfront slowed the leader’s pace and soon we had eight cars nearly under a blanket. Doug Coby was able get the nose of the #77 under the #18 of Donny Lia after a late race restart. Coby finished off his pass with a slide job.

NASCAR threw the seventh and final caution to correct an error they had made in the lineup from the previous restart. Lia apparently was none to pleased with the fashion that Coby had passed him. The next thing I saw was the #18’s right side bars hit the #77’s left front and the #77 wound up in the wall just below the flag stand.

I don’t think this incident would have occurred had there been no caution. The reason that the caution flew was that NASCAR inadvertently had not moved the #28 car of Tyler Haydt up with the rest of the lead lap cars before the previous restart. Ironically that was the car that Doug drove previously to the #77.

I don’t know what goes on inside of the heads of these drivers when they strap in and put on their helmets. I do know from personal experience that some of them can turn into (expletive deleted) at the drop of the hat when they do. That’s no excuse for Donny or for anyone else.

Regardless of Lia’s intent, the move appeared to be cheap. Having interviewed the young man and knowing him for as long as I do, nothing could be further from his character and the way he does business than the word cheap. I’m sure that’s the least of his worries and I’m sure that he will admit what he did was wrong.

This was also not the most intelligent thing for Donny to do. Wrecking a competitor at the front of the field under caution directly in front of the officials earns Lia a nomination for the Fred Flintstone award. (Insert your own bonehead joke here.) I’m sure that folks ragging on Donny’s mental capacity is something that bothers Lia. The bottom line is that Donny is smarter and classier than that and he knows it.

I like Donny and I like Doug. Both of them had cars that appeared to be faster than eventual race winner Ted Christopher. NASCAR officials parked Lia after the incident and subsequent to the post of the unofficial finish, Lia was docked two positions to show his finish behind that of Coby.

Regardless of that incident, I don’t feel the caution should have flown. We had a great race going on up at the front of the field. For once it was possible to have a big race end without being littered with yellow laundry. I know hindsight is 20-20 but I thought the officials could have lived with the mistake they had made. Even after it was announced that there was a mistake, seconds before the green flew, the restart could have been averted and the situation rectified. Once they went back to racing it should have continued green unless the caution flew for an incident on the track.

Tony Hirschman made a valiant effort to try to pass Christopher for the win during the green, white, checker finish but fell short. The #48 team just ran out of laps. TC leads the points as the WMT heads to Loudon where Ted has brought the #13 into victory lane for each of the past three Modified events.

A couple of other notes, it was nice to see Tony Ferrante, Jr. run well at Thompson. It was also great to see Bob Polverari and Kenny Barry race competitively. Mike Stefanik made a great charge in the closing laps after receiving the final beneficiary pass of the day. The #16 team had him pit for tires and Mike brought home a fine fifth place finish. I am sorry that I didn’t realize that Linda Brady had changed her hair and embarrassed that I thought Dave Meredith had gotten a haircut since Martinsville when he hadn’t. I also hope that Dale gave Shawn his lucky pen back and it was great to see Rent.

When I got off of the boat and headed home, I checked the gas prices. (Expletive deleted) the prices are lower here than they were in CT. The place where I normally purchase gas is still twenty cents high. I noticed prices near the four-dollar range on the South Fork Monday. I better count my blessings.

The MSS Staff will be on hand at NHIS to bring you the latest info from the track. We will get practice times and qualifying results up as quickly as possible. Time trials are scheduled to start at 2:20 PM Thursday so look for those results at about 4 PM if the weather looks good. We hope as many people as possible can join us up at the Magic Mile. For those who can’t, look us up at 5 PM as that is when the Sylvania 100 presented by Lowe’s is scheduled to begin. We will do our best to bring you Live Updates throughout the race.