Leinninger.com

The last race weekend of the 2006 WHRRI was quite… eventful. The Spec Neon points leader rolled his car on Saturday, but had it back together and ready to race on Sunday. During the first race on Sunday, I got tangled in a 3-car incident when a neon 2 cars ahead of me spun. I locked up my brakes to avoid it, but no luck. I bashed in the front of my racecar. From the looks of my car you would think that the guy I hit looked pretty bad. Not true… his bumper cover was just loose on the driver’s side. I managed to pull the front crossmember out enough so that it didn’t rub on my pwer steering pump and hammer out enough of the damage to race in the final feature of the season… with a lot of duct tape (aka “racer’s tape”) on the front of the car. I had my fastest lap during the feature, an unoffical 1’23″4. Some work on the car as well as my technique should make next season very exciting, indeed.

Gina and I traveled to Indianapolis last weekend to crew for Glenn at O’Reilly Raceway Park (formerly known as IRP/Indianapolis Raceway Park). The track and facilities were HUGE. The walk from our paddock location to the grid seemed like a 1/2 mile! A track that size favors horsepower and sticky tires with a 125 mph first turn after a 3/8th mile front straight! Glenn steadily improved his time during the weekend, and avoided a serious accident involving at least 3 cars in his class (sending 2 of them home for the weekend). One off-course excursion resulted in a little aluminum repair, but otherwise a very clean weekend. We had a great time driving around Indianapolis, we saw the outside of Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Home of the Indy 500) and feasted upon Hardee’s goodness.