When Gord was contacted by Jeff Wilcox we learnt that there had been some rumblings about the team’s future at Delaware.
We read the posts so far and to clear up any confusion and/or baseless rumors we thought we’d register and say Hi.

- It is unlikely we will be able to run at Delaware again this year. I can’t lie; the year so far has taken a massive toll on the car, the team, the budget and the nerves, it’s also had a negative impact on the Barrie LLM too as we are just so busy fixing the LM.. After last Friday evening, just when we were finally getting somewhere with the car setup, we now have a car in need of a new clip and a whole bunch of sundry parts just to be able to have it rolling around the shop. We haven’t even cut the frame away to get to the motor yet, it’s all very disappointing.  We will see how things go over the next 2 weeks I guess.

- The initial incident with the #5 car was regrettable. Gord’s hood was indeed up on the rear quarter of the #5 when the #5 came down and  it can be argued that Gord was too keen to press the point, or that the #5 spotter should have pushed his car outside, but either way it happened and although Gord was unable to drive round the spinning #5 due to another car on his right, forcing him to smack the #5 rear quarter, there was absolutely no malice or intent from the 10x.  We don’t wish to press the point on that, Gord would have stayed back rather than turn the #5, sometimes *hit happens right?

- The video doesn’t show it, we removed it from the footage, but the #5 did indeed give Gord a flick on the front straight which bent a bar into the outside edge of the rear left tire. The tire did start to make smoke under acceleration during the caution but we did not see any pressing reason to come in with 4 laps left to go. The bar position was shielded by the Black body which reformed to its original position following the contact and the car was driving perfectly ‘normally’. If we had any idea that it was the bar touching the tire, instead of the fender as we thought, we would have insisted he come in.  I can 100% assure you that we were NOT instructed to come in to check/change the tire; I have no idea where that piece of misinformation originated.  It’s easy to look back and suggest we should have come in, and it was discussed at length within the team after the fact, but as we know, in the heat of battle, drivers will prefer to drive on three wheels rather than come in.  As soon as the restart was underway and Gord went hard into turn One, the suspension compressed which drove the rear left further into the bent bar. It was this which caused the rear to momentarily lock up and pitch Gord into the wall. We were relieved that at least we didn’t take anybody with us.

- Yes, we were very upset when the #21 rolled down onto us [the other week] and pretty much destroyed an entire [new] body plus many parts (I’ve never seen a body twist so badly as to break both the front AND rear windows). It was a Massive setback for us which took two weeks to come back from and $thousands.

The Delaware officials have, for the most part, been more than welcoming and Jeff Wilcox has really bent over backwards to encourage us to come run with you guys. That’s never been in question.
We ourselves are a friendly bunch of guys who avoid politics and who would help anyone out of a jam. We like to race and literally hate wrecking ourselves and others; it’s just not something we do. We don’t have the money, time or mentality to be in any way gratified by using our car as a bulldozer although that doesn’t seem to be a problem for some of the drivers, which has been a big eye opener for us.
Even though it’s fair to say there is definitely a “them and us” undercurrent with many of the teams and despite the fact that we are usually tinkering with the car or eating Fries, we have made a few friends on pit road amongst them our immediate pit neighbors, #37, #14 and a couple of the #21 crew.  

Speaking merely rhetorically, all tracks have their troubles but I would say that even the racers themselves have no problem in seeing the Black flag come out for incidents executed under caution flags – Just saying.

Gord turns the #5 at 09:14
Gord stuffs the wall at 09:50
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYRibnoDthM#normal ]Delaware August 13th feature race[/url]

Our Youtube channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/RidgeRoadRacing

RidgeRoadRacing:

+ 10

Great post!

Thanx for clearing things up RRR.

Things seem to get blown out of proportion on here, good to hear you guys will be back at some point......

Thanks for correcting the record.

You should be inline for some sposorship  money with such an open and honest approach.

Good luck with the rest of the year, and I hope to see you out next year when i return home.