Thunderhill Opener Results in 8th Place Finish for Budzo Racing

For the third week in a row, the races at Luxemburg Speedway were cancelled due to rain showers. However, the weather did cooperate on Saturday night for us to head to Thunderhill Raceway in Sturgeon Bay for their season opener.

Being that it was opening night, a draw/redraw format was in use. My heat race draw put me on the inside of the final row, with the top 5 finishers receiving their feature redraw position. I sat back in the early stages to get a handle of my car on a choppy surface, and fought the handling of the car while I was in the 7th position.

A caution flag flew for contact between Cody Rass and Andy Ratajczak, putting me in the 6th position on the restart. With one lap to go, I got inside of Ratajczak to take away a 5th place finish.

My redraw spot put me 3rd on the starting grid for the feature. I was running in the 6th position behind Ryan LeMieux until a caution flag flew to bunch the field back together. We resumed our single file racing around the track until another caution flag flew with only a handful of laps remaining.

A miscue lining us back up for the final restart put me outside of Josh Massart for the final few laps. I tucked behind Massart and tried to make room on the inside for a pass, but came up short when the checkers flew. I was credited with an 8th place finish on the night.

Our plans for this weekend will be to head (hopefully) to Luxemburg Speedway for their season opener on Friday night, with a return to Thunderhill on Saturday night. If either of those tracks should have a rainout, we could make the trip to Seymour Speedway on Sunday night for the 1st round of their Summer Holiday Classic series.

Remember you can find Budzo Racing on the web at budzoracing.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/budzoracing, on YouTube at youtube.com/budzoracing and on Twitter at twitter.com/budzoracing.