Budzo Racing Rebounds After Blown Engine

Our Memorial Day weekend didn’t get off to the best start; actually it was probably the worst start possible for our weekend of racing. During pace laps before Friday night’s feature, the engine expired which obviously ended our night and sent us into a scramble on Saturday morning to replace it.

We switched everything over to be ready to race with a spec engine on Saturday night at Thunderhill Raceway. We didn’t expect to be at 100%, and we clearly weren’t in the heat race. There were some issues with the jetting of the carburetor and we were also running a high water temperature.

In the feature that night, I did my best with what we had, and ended up finishing in 5th to stay atop the point standings for at least another week.

We did some tuning to the spec engine during this past week in preparation to run both Friday at Luxemburg and Saturday at Thunderhill, but Mother Nature had other ideas in mind which cancelled both nights of racing.

With that, we decided to head to Seymour Speedway on Sunday evening for the first time this season. Our main goal was to get the water temperature of the engine down, and the heat race showed that we had that issue fixed. However, I finished dead last out of 10 cars in the heat race, so that would land me deep in the field for the semi-feature.

Starting 12th out of 13 cars in the semi-feature, I was hoping we could find ourselves in the top-5 to transfer to the night’s feature. After a few early cautions, I was already up to the 4th spot. I made a pass around the outside of Cody Schroeder to nab the 2nd position before a final caution flag flew. With 1 lap remaining, I ducked down under the leader and ended up taking the win at the checkers.

That win would put us 16th on the starting grid for the feature. Again, I quickly moved up through the field, finding myself in the top-10 at the midway point of the race. I worked my way up to the 7th spot behind JJ Andersen with a handful of laps remaining, but was unable to complete a pass for 6th in the closing laps.

We were lucky enough to find a used crate engine this week, so we will be switching back to the crate for the upcoming weekend of racing.

This weekend we will be racing at Luxemburg Speedway on Friday night, and now we will be racing Sunday nights at Thunderhill Raceway for the remainder of the season.

Remember to check out Budzo Racing on the web at budzoracing.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/budzoracing, on Twitter at twitter.com/budzoracing, on YouTube at youtube.com/budzoracing and on Instagram at instagram.com/budzoracing.