Tuesdays with TMAC – Solid Gold Cup!
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
by Bill W - A return to a basic setup was the recipe that sprint car driver, Terry McCarl, and the Big Game Treestands #24 team needed. Two strong finishes in the prestigious Gold Cup Race of Champions at the Silver Dollar Speedway near Chico, California were put on the board, as the team heads home to race in TMAC’s native state of Iowa this week.
The Harvest Classic was forgettable for TMAC, so he and Crew Chief, Tyler Swank, took a basic approach to Chico. “We were a little conservative this weekend, after not doing well at Calistoga, especially junking the car on the first night there,” says TMAC. “It seems that when you don’t try something…like a bigger left rear, to tighten the car up…then you’re loose and you wish you would have done it. We have been too tight lately, and ‘overmechanicking’, so that’s why we were conservative.”
Though TMAC prefers a “tight” racecar, the “loose” conditions didn’t hamper him too much in the Friday preliminary. With 56 cars competing, he registered the ninth quick time of the night and walked away with the heat win after starting on row one. After finishing seventh in the dash, he wrestled a respectable seventh place finish in the 30-lap main event, locking himself into Saturday’s $50,000 to win finale.
Starting inside row seven, TMAC quickly moved past seven cars to sixth, but when track conditions changed, a mechanical malfunction plagued him. “We were actually pretty good,” he says. “We should have probably finished up a spot or two at the end. After the red (on lap 21 of 40), it started to lay some rubber. I was trying to push the wing forward, after that, because we had it all the way back when it was slick. The wing got jammed back, and I kept trying to move it forward. I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t loosen up and get off the right rear. With the rubber down, it just got faster, and we got tighter. Meyers got by us and I could tell he wasn’t nearly as tight as we were. After the checkers, I saw that the wing was still all the way back. We lost one spot to that, but it could have been a lot worse.”
The seventh place finish in the finale was a good way to end the western swing. “We ended up with a couple of top tens (at the Gold Cup). Tyler and I did go a little conservative, and we’re just trying to build our confidence a little bit. It was a great show and a great crowd all weekend. It was one of the four biggest races of the year, and we were hoping for a top five, but unfortunately, it didn’t happen.”
The Week Ahead
For the first time in WoO history, the series will race at the Clay County Fair in Spencer, Iowa, tomorrow (Wednesday) night. TMAC is happy to be a part of history and close to his sponsors. “Spencer is not far from Bosma Poultry, Big Game Treestands, and a lot of our sponsors, so I’m really hoping to have a great finish there!” he says.
The track has undergone a transformation from a big flat half-mile, to a 3/8 mile banked oval. “The Clay County Fair race has a lot of history to it,” says TMAC. “I give them a lot of credit for changing that to a 3/8 from a half-mile. That configuration lends to some exciting racing, and I look forward to my first trip there!”
When TMAC says history, he means it. No less than eight drivers who won the Clay County Fair Race have been inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and Museum in Knoxville. Bobby Grim, Jim Hurtubise, Pete Folse, Jerry Richert, Scratch Daniels, Don Mack, Ray Lee Goodwin and Doug Wolfgang have all ended up in victory lane in Spencer. Many more Hall of Famers, including Jan Opperman, tried but couldn’t quite make it to the top of the podium. Earl Wagner, Gene Gennetten, Thad Dosher, Dick Forbrook, Randy Smith and Don Droud Jr. also have their names on the winners list, and this should be a good one!
On Friday, TMAC heads to Topeka, Kansas as the WoO tackles Heartland Park and its 3/8 mile oval. They’ll head to another 3/8 mile facility on Sunday to compete at Charter Raceway Park near Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. That date was added to the schedule after an August rainout at the facility.
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