Thursday was a beautiful day for racing. It was much too nice a day to have to go to work. Thompson beckoned and arrived at about 12:30.

At the track I wandered around to see who all had showed up. I noticed that Alex Hoag had made the tow from upstate New York. The Barry’s had brought their #20 for Richard Savary to drive and Renee Dupuis, who has been noticeably absent of late, was there with her #90.

I spoke with Eddie Whelan. I told him that I had heard that Brad Lafontaine had been brought on board to be the crew chief for the #36. This, he told me, was true and was actually something that was more or less expected.

Richie Niemiec, who had setup the #36 for successful runs at Holland and Riverhead, is a dynamite chassis man. Unfortunately, as has been the case for many years, it has been difficult to lure Fluffy to the track at times. Someone was going to get the call and in the wake of Lafontaine’s split with the TS Haulers team two weeks ago, it seemed to be a natural fit.

I went up top for practice. This is when we work on identification for the updates. It is also when I get the driver list ironed out and scope for potential problems that teams may be having.

Kevin Goodale backed it in to turn four. It was later determined that the steering arm on his right front spindle had failed. Kevin tried in vain to drive his #58 back to the paddock area. Goodale exited his car for the obligatory visit to the ambulance.

Although they had an ambulance at Thompson in time for practice to start and they had enough push trucks to start a NEMA feature, they had but one wrecker. I wondered what kind of damage that would cause to the #58 which clearly seemed to need a double hook. It certainly appeared as though the Goodale Modifed got wedged against the side of the pit gate as it was towed through.

The bottom of the fuel cell bar was dragging, the rear tires were smoking. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Whether most of the damage was created by the accident or the tow wasn’t determined. Once the car was returned to the paddock the #58 car was done for the day.

There was a photographer who probably got a good shot of Goodale’s wreck as well as a spin by last week’s winner, James Civali. He was stationed right outside of the turn four wall. It seemed like a relatively precarious place for someone to stand. Several NASCAR officials questioned allowing the shutterbug’s permission to be there. They were told, “If the State allows it, that’s okay.”

The Bud 150 is one of the events where the race sponsor pays for the use of the press box for hospitality. The media vermin wind up shoehorned into the smaller box that is normally used for corporate hospitality next to the officials and the announcer’s booth. I would like to thank Tom Brodeur and Mike Rosen from Levine Distributing of Norwich, CT who were kind enough to invite me to stay in the “big box” as a guest of Budweiser. I chose to go hang out with the Connecticut Motorsports Press Association guys in the small box instead but I did appreciate the offer.

Some guys just have to be Mr. Fixit. I guess they would like to be like Tom Baldwin or Rusty Wallace. One, two, three…change the springs! One, two, three…change the shocks! One, two, three…change it back! Been there, done that.

Did I ever write about the beauty of Thompson International Speedway? The scenic vista offered beyond the back straightaway is just gorgeous. Somebody should make that a post card.

Alex Hoag took a couple of passes out on the track in his #87 and was pushed into the paddock area. When I returned there later, Hoag had already left to go home early. Apparently he suffered some sort of engine woes.

Steve Whitt scared some folks with his smoke show. Practice ground to a halt as the TIS staff inspected the track for fluids. An oil line was the apparent culprit.

Eric Beers and Jim Storace both battled carburetor problems during practice. Eric felt like he had a distributor problem. The team fixed the problem with the carb and Beers responded with a sub-nineteen second qualifying lap.

Mike Stefanik told me that the #16 team found something that was wrong in their car this week. Stefanik mentioned to me that although they were leading the point standings, they had been very disappointed with the performance level of the #16 car. Consistency had gotten Mike to the point lead, he still wants to win. It’s great to see that fire.

Tony Hirschman has been lights out in qualifying for a couple of years now. His biggest complaint in the past has been the redraw. Back to back weeks Hirschman has set fast time AND picked the pole. Hey! Where’s the big hat?

The biggest surprises in qualifying were a few of the young guns. Ron Yuhas, Jr., Richard Savary and Jon McKennedy all turned top-ten times. The disappointment of qualifying was the #41 of Reggie Ruggiero which had a terminal engine failure during the scuff session.

Jimmy “Showtime” Blewett took down the win in the thirty-lap Sunoco Modified feature after a spirited battle with Keith Rocco. The real deal in the Sunoco Modified division has been the battle between Jeff Malave, Tommy Cravenho and rookie Woody Pitkat for the Thompson title and the Division IV NASCAR Weekly Series national championship. Thursday night Malave finished third followed by Pitkat and Cravenho finished twentieth. Unofficially, Malave currently holds a six point lead over Pitkat.

The Pro-Stock feature was won by a car with a crate engine.

The #48 dashed to the lead at the start of the race. Hirschman led the first forty-five circuits until he was headed by Mike Stefanik after a restart on lap forty-six. The #16 did look stronger.

The box score will show that the Budweiser 150 was slowed by nine cautions for forty-eight laps. Actually the first three cautions comprised fifteen laps of which one was run under green and the next four cautions comprised twenty-six laps of which four were run under green.

As in most cases where cautions breed cautions, [Mr. Boogity did not invent that line] the original caution was for a genuine caution condition. The subsequent cautions occur because faster cars with fresh tires restart behind slower cars with older tires. It’s time for a visit from Dr Dub.

Here’s what we do. We take all of the drivers that are constantly involved in caution after caution after caution. We strap them into chairs and blindfold them. Dr Dub yells “Green, Green, Green!” If the driver’s right foot moves, Dr Dub’s assistant whacks it with a tire spoon. We repeat the process over and over until this uncontrollable twitching goes away. We condition the foot to move based on the visual cue of cars driving away instead of the knee-jerk reaction to what a spotter might be telling the driver over the radio. There, I said it.

Lap eighty-three was when Eric Beers got run over by a reindeer. Something flew over the back of the #3 car and it might as well have been Santa Claus. The sleigh of last week’s winner came to a stop at the entrance to pit road and Eric looked as though he was determined to return his present.

Hey, let’s keep going with this Christmas in August theme while I’m struggling through sleep deprivation. We’ve got about twenty-two lead-lap cars at this point. Nineteen cars pit like its Christmas morning and three stay out for the festival of Whelen lights on the Pace Car.

I don’t want to pick on anyone but we have three of the cars that have been among the slowest on the track on old tires out front on the restart. We have nineteen faster cars all jacked up on eggnog and Hoosier rubber behind them with spotters waiting to yell in their ears, “Green, Green, Green!” What would anyone expect to happen when they blow out the candles on the menorah? Yes Virginia, they wrecked some racecars.

Most of the green flag action that remained featured some awesome racing between John Blewett, III and Ted Christopher. They swapped the lead more times than the box score would indicate. Jerry Marquis and then Todd Szegedy were in the thick of the mix up front as well.

The #66 and the #36 had been racing side-by-side for what appeared to be at least a couple of laps. The two touched and the #66 wound up in the backstretch wall. We hear the same thing most of the time that something like this happens. “He wrecked me intentionally!” and “I didn’t mean to do it!” Only the contestants really know.

In the wake of the Blewett crash, Tony Hirschman’s #48, which had been running fourth prior to the accident, suffered significant body damage. The #2 of Todd Szegedy lay motionless in turn three. Szegedy’s ride had suffered a broken rear-end. I was not able to determine whether the accident contributed to the mechanical failure for the #2 team. However, that would seem to be a little too coincidental for it not to have.

Hirschman continued on with his damaged car restarting second. Behind him was the #15 of Zach Sylvester. Sylvester hadn’t been much of a threat throughout the night but he was in the right place at the right time for a good finish. Christopher dashed the last three laps nearly unopposed to the finish. Hirschman’s car was wicked loose during that last little sprint. Sylvester seemed as though he would just be happy to finish with four wheels on his car.

In Victory Lane, Christopher said, “I got into him and I didn’t mean for that to happen. I got a little loose you know, it’s more of a racing deal. I didn’t mean to fence the guy. I just want to thank Eddie [Whelan] and all of the guys and Brad Lafontaine who came back as a crew chief this time. We got the good lane there on the outside and worked it good. I knew that John only put two tires on and I know Jerry didn’t put [as many] tires on [as we did] either. We took three and Brad made the right adjustments for us there. What happened why I was losing some distance was because the throttle kept sticking going into the turns, you know I was pushing pretty good. Back with Brad and all of the guys, it feels good.”

Tony Hirschman said, “We were doing all right today we had a good car today, just trying to be careful. The last two weeks have been brutal. Riverhead and Stafford last week, you try to bring it home clean. The guys are running really hard up front and banging around. I wasn’t into that. We’re supposed to stay here for a tire test here tomorrow for Hoosier and I wanted to bring the car home in one piece. Them two guys got together upfront and John bounced off of the wall. I was clear of it and then I got the other Blewett, Jimmy Blewett, runs over the back of me, takes my body off. Luckily we hung on for second there at the end. Sylvester was behind me at the end, he run me clean. I’m just glad to come out of here with a good finish.”

Zach Sylvester said, “All day, the car was real decent. We just misadjusted for time trials and that set us back a little. So we figured if we can button her down long enough and just hang on and make our way through. It really didn’t even go that way for us. Thirty laps in I was already peddling. We came in and took tires. Had to come in again because we didn’t make enough adjustments. Then it just seemed like survival out there. I figured if I don’t beat on it too much maybe we’ll have something at the end for them. The guys did a great job all day. We had a couple of incidents after practice that almost set us back during time trials big time and they got the job done and we come out with a good finish.”

In the press box I spoke to TC “Two weeks ago we were talking about Fluffy.”

Ted replied, “And this week we’ve got Brad.” I said, “Okay?” Christopher told us, “There’s nothing wrong with Fluffy, like we told him. Everything he did was great, at the garage and stuff but you know you get into these races where you’ve got to pit and make a call when you’re going to pit, make a call what you’re going to do to the racecar and you know I just can’t do that from inside of the car. That’s what killed us at Stafford last week. Eddie’s been real good friends with Brad and he got Brad to come in. That was the key deal. Now all I have to do is drive this thing. You like winning, its unfortunate part what happened with Johnny but you know you’ve got open wheels and we just touched that little bit and... The problem I was having was, why I ended up with them getting to me on that restart, I broke a throttle spring so the thing wasn’t returning all of the way going into the turns. So that’s why I ended up pushing. Once I would get my momentum going it was better and it started getting freer. We were definitely faster, unfortunately that happened at the end.”

The surprises of the race to me were the performances of Richard Savary and Ron Yuhas, Jr. Savary started up front and did better than holding his own with the leaders. Yuhas earned the rookie of the race.

I want to send out a thank you to someone who helped me this week. Brian from Racing Electronics hooked me up with a repair. Now I can hear everyone very well over the scanner.

Modified Madness will be at Thompson and in the spirit of the Chase for the Championship; the “Chase for the Ass” will be on. The winner of the annual award gets a special trophy that features a donkey’s hind quarters. The media vermin that is determined to be the biggest “jackass” of the event earns the award. Jason Christley is the defending winner. Travis Barrett and Shawn Courchesne are former winners. Buddha has won it twice.

Actually, Modified Madness is what will replace the Thompson 300 this year. Included in the event is a 150-lap Whelen Modified Tour race, a 75-lap Race of Champions Tour race and a 75-lap TVMRS race. The Thompson Weekly competitors will also battle through a 50-lap Sunoco Modified race, a Thompson Modified race and a Pro Four Modified feature event. Modified Madness will be September 9th and 10th at Thompson International Speedway.

After we left the press box, I took a tool down through the paddock area in my cruising vessel. There I saw, as I expected, the Kehley team finishing up a fairly complete repair of the damage the #48 suffered near the end of the race. They did that for the Hoosier guys so they could get their test in.

Harry yelled, “Hey Big Gulp Harry!” I exited my car and heard the news about the thief amongst us. What a Grinch. I am sure there will be more to follow on that. It will probably in the form of a post from a Police blotter.

I got out of there at about one in the morning and made it home before five.
I’ve finally finished my writing and I feel barely alive.
I’m really tired now, just me in a chair,
with the thoughts of sugar plums dancing in the air.
We head out in a fortnight to Martinsville for a race.
Mods from the South and the North will pack the place.
Good tidings from Long Island I do send.
This articles now over, it’s the end.