Events

David At SOBO Early Saturday Morning

David Polenz Racing teamed up with Robert Bruce Racing (RBR) headed to South Boston Speedway (SOBO) Saturday night for the second race of a seven race deal. Besides Richmond (RIR) and South Boston the deal will have David behind the wheel of the RBR car at Motor Mile Speedway as well.

Since the RIR race RBR has made several changes on the car and we were all very excited to get to SOBO and see how the car would perform. We unloaded and David headed on to the track for his first laps ever at SOBO. The car handled exceptionally well during the first practice with an old set of tires just to shake it down. But as things have gone for us this year we headed out on the track for the second and final practice before qualifying and the problems started. The car all of the sudden died, the car stalled and wouldn’t restart. David coasted it in to the pits and the guys from RBR went to work, it appeared as the battery went bad. The guys got it changed and David headed back out on the track, then another problem popped up. The car ran great down the strait away but would die out in the corners. Once again David pulled in the pits and the guys went back to work. They thought they found a bad wire, they changed it and back out David went. The problem was still there and this time we didn’t have time to work on it before practice was over. The guys worked hard going over the car for the next hour trying to figure it out what was going on. They found a switch that seemed to have a loose connector; we felt that it might be the problem.

David was the first car out for qualifying, it didn’t go well, the car died and he was barely able to complete a lap which was enough to get him in the race, he would be starting 18^th in the 18 car field. Not exactly how we envisioned this going. At this point we were all in disbelief and just started going over the whole car again. We found a bad terminal on the back side of the coil, we fixed it and the car seemed to run better. So we pushed the car out on the grid and had our fingers crossed while we waited for the start of the first 75 lap race.

On the start of the race we were all relieved when the car finally ran right. David was able to start making his way through the field, the competition level at SOBO is pretty high and making his way through the field was tough, but David was able to make his way to 9^th by the end of the first race.

David was lined up 9^th for the second 75 lap race, on the start David was caught up in a heck of a battle with the next two cars in front of him and it was awesome to watch. The pack David was racing with was running laps as fast as the front cars and there was good racing all the way through the field of cars. As David was battling for 7^th place we got bitten by bad luck again, the right front wheel broke and sent David sliding, he just missed the car he was racing with, he slid out and slammed the outside wall. The damage on the car was too severe to continue, David limped the car in to the pits and that ended our night. It was not a great way to end an already tough day but we know the car is handling good and we are hopeful for the next time we race it. We will be at ODS next week with the Polenz Motorsports car and then we will be heading to Motor Mile Speedway the week after in the RBR car. We will keep you posted on other events as well. Check David’s web-site for the race schedule and the appearance season has started as well; the appearance schedule is on his web-site too.