Motor struggles cause of Belleville Midget Nationals DNF
August 13th, 2010
The Belleville High Banks are notorious for being hard on midget engines, so teams roll in prepared to have motor issues. For Chad and the Billy Boat Motorsports team, they spent more time changing engines then they did on the racetrack.
Showing up at the Belleville High Banks with a fresh motor, and coming off a solid top 3 showing in POWRi competition, Chad’s confidence would go up in smoke in hot laps.
Even though the night would get off to a rough start, it was still early. Missing qualifying and heat race action while changing the motor, the team would get it completed, and Chad would start the 12-lap B main in the 19th position. Needing to run Top 4 to transfer into the night’s preliminary feature event, Chad sliced through the field in a B-main that would see no yellow flags to bunch the field back up, ultimately finishing in the 5th position.
Fortunately for Chad, the car finishing in the fourth and final transfer spot would lose an engine crossing the finish line, thus making him unable to start the A-feature, and opening a spot for Chad.
“It was unfortunate what happened to Andy Shouse at the end of the B-Main,” Chad said. “But in racing, one person’s misfortune is another person’s fortune. Thankfully, I was on the fortunate end for once.”
After a long Friday night, Chad and the team tried to think positive thoughts going into Saturday’s racing program. Unfortunately, positive thoughts didn’t last long, as another internal motor issue caused the fourth a final motor to expire in hot laps, thus ending the 2010 Belleville Midget Nationals for Chad.
“It was definitely a long week for us, but we still have more racing to do this year, so we will continue on. I have some big stock car races coming up and I feel like we’re very prepared for those,” Chad said.
Chad and the Billy Boat Motorsports team will be at New Hampshire Motor Speedway with the K&N Pro Series on September 17th, immediately followed by Dover International Speedway on September 24th.