5/7/06 - Wisconsin Challenge Series at Madison Int'l Raceway


Quick Weekend Recap:
Qualifying- 17.812, 20th out of 63 cars
Feature- Started 28th out of 28 cars w/ WCS Provisional
Finished- 5th

The Monday Motorsports team traveled to the Madison International Speedway for the first ever, Wisconsin Challenge Series event at the Speedway. This was Andy's first time racing at the speedway, and the first time majority of the crew had even seen the fastest half-mile oval in Wisconsin. We made the trip down on Saturday to get some much needed practice and seat time. We were only able to get our times down in the 18.3 second range on Saturday, with a set of tires with several laps on them. The test was still successful in getting the driver comfortable in the car at with the speedway. On Sunday, An amazing 64 Super Late Model cars arrived for event from all over the Midwest. Only 28 cars would be qualified into the event, so the pressure was on. The top 16 in time trials, top 3 in each of the 3 qualifying races and 3 WCS Provisionals made up the 28 car main event. We qualified at 17.812 seconds, just .254 seconds off of the fastest qualifying time for the day, which put us 20th overall. Because Andy had raced 7 of the last 8 WCS events, we were eligible for a provisional being the fastest WCS regular not to qualify into the show by time trails. We were slated to start 3rd in the qualifying race, but knowing we had a locked position in the main event, we decided to start in the rear of the qualifying race and just take a few laps, saving the car and tires for the main event. In the feature event, we started dead last in the 28th spot. We steadily worked our way toward the front, avoided a few accidents and reached the top 10 around lap 65. We passed several of Wisconsin's best such as NASCAR Craftsman Truck Rookie Erik Darnell, Multi-Time NASCAR Midwest Series Champion Steve Carlson, Tim Schendel, and Steve Holzhausen to name a few.. We reached the top 5 around lap 85, but were unable to make a challenge for the 4th spot. We finished the 100-lap event in the 5th position. Everyone on the team was very pleased with the results from our first event at the Madison International Speedway and we are looking forward to the next WCS event on May 21st at our hometrack, Wisconsin International Raceway. Please join us this Saturday, May 13th at Harley Davidson of Appleton, for their annual Open House! We also plan to turn a few laps at WIR in the afternoon on Saturday.