Note: The content contained below does not necessarily reflect the thoughts of the BDI Racing organication as a whole or its individuals and are strictly the thoughts of the individual writer.

To say this has been a tough year on the Late Model side of our BDI Racing program would be, well, putting it lightly. We started off the season great with a top-five run at Lanier, but ever since then, it's like we've been dodging that little rain cloud that hovers wherever our SLM may go. Just when we think we have something figured out, we have something uncontrollable spoil what could've been a run to build off of. Sometimes, we flat out suck. I know, I'm the Director of Racing Operations and I shouldn't say things like that, but sometimes there's no way to sugar-coat something that tastes sour.

It's not due to lack of effort. It's not because of a lack of knowledge or talent. The lousy part is that I nor anyone else really knows what it is. That's why we decided to take Michael out of the car for Saturday's Pro Late Model show at Concord Speedway and put someone else in it to hopefully give us that holy grail bit of information that may turn things around for us headed into the big late-season races.

It's no secret that I've wanted to race our car at Concord for quite some time. I'm not a huge fan of the tri-oval format or the quality (more like lack of quality) of racing at the half-mile track. No, I figured after being part of teams that race all around the country, I've never raced at the track that's about eight minutes from my house here in Concord. Even when I lived back in Connecticut, we raced at Stafford either weekly or a couple times a year and that track was about 20 minutes from home. Concord is one of those places that sucks to race at because it's so darn tricky, but it's cool because it's not like anyplace else and no matter what, we'll be back to our houses in just a few minutes after the race win, lose or draw.

So Concord Speedway was where we were going on Saturday to try to shake the bad luck and maybe steal a win to get all of our confidence levels back up. We knew where we'd go, just not much more than that. A chance encounter at Buffalo Wild Wings a couple weeks ago led us to the perfect person to put in the car to find out if we're lacking in any part of our program.

Bobby Gill has won just about everything there is to win in short track racing. He's won a bazillion races at Concord over the years in various types of cars, too. He's a wheelman, plain and simple. So what better combo than Bobby Gill at Concord Speedway to hopefully figure things out?

We put Dustin Archer, normally Meghan's crew chief, in charge of Bobby's car at Concord since our regular Late Model crew chief, Jason Ricker, was celebrating his baby shower back home in Maine for the weekend. Okay, the part was more for his baby-momma Allison, but Jason's role was important because he had to figure out a way to get all that baby stuff back to North Carolina.

We brought a bunch of our new guys like Dave Hirsch (who's been a buddy since we circled the wagons with the ChaLew mobile for a few years in the Busch North/East Series), Ricky Tassinari, Colin “The Cuz” Meekhof, “Downtown” Nick Brown (himself a solid Late Model racer back in Maine now attending UNC Charlotte's Engineering program), plus our regular cast of characters, including Michael.

From the time we unloaded, everything seemed to be working. Even when the car didn't cooperate with us the first round of practice, all the changes we made and little tweaks we threw at it seemed to work. Bobby was bad fast by practice's end. Qualifying didn't go so great, but we knew what we had to do for the feature. We qualified fourth, but this guy (I'm pointing both thumbs back at himself right now) redrew the pole.

After the redraw, I told Bobby not to make me look bad for doing that for him. He obliged in Bobby fashion. He did a half-smile (about the most you'll get out of him) and said, “Sounds good.”

Bobby's not much of a talker. He's old school. He's intimidating in the way that he's quiet and to-the-point. Some think he's a real jerk, which I think he uses to further intimidate people on the track. And know what? It works for him. After a few days of working with him in the shop, he opened up more and more with us and we did the same with him. We got to joking with him to the point where I even called him “Sunshine” on the radio before the race. He's a badass, for sure, but he's really a cool guy when he gets to know you and opens up a bit. Still, he's tough as nails when he needs to be.

We fought some transmission issues on the initial start and fell back to second behind Mark Reedy at the beginning of the race. Bobby didn't take long to get back by Reedy on lap nine and started checking out from the field. It wasn't long before we were up about 10 carlengths on the second-place guy. We were on cruise control. Then, we got Concord'ed.

I mentioned earlier how excited I was to race at the “home” track here in town. Now that I have, I see why their car counts aren't very good. Okay, they suck. Six or seven cars in their Pro Late Model division every week is putrid. But, after seeing how things work aroudn there, I can see why so many people don't bother going there.

We were up big on the field, which outside of us, was all weekly competitors at the track. Yes, besides our car, the other five (that's five – so six cars total) had all been there all season long. So, seeing us there may not have been a big deal to some (like Bobby Measmer and Mark Reedy's teams – we had a good time hanging out with both Saturday), some people, including the track itself, may not have been super-thrilled with our appearance nor our spanking we were putting on them.

That's why on lap 25, with Bobby in command big time on the field, a caution flag flew for “debris.” Yes, NASCAR fans, a “debris” caution when someone had a big-ass lead. Go figure, right? Supposedly there was some debris against the inside wall off turn four, which if there was (none of us saw it), it was hardly an issue for any driver out there.

While the yellow sucked, we knew we'd be just fine judging by how good our car was. But, on the restart, the transmission slipped up again, allowing Reedy to get the lead back on the outside groove and allowing Cooper Faassen to ride on Bobby's rear bumper in third.

I don't know much about Mr. Faassen other than he's been known to rough some guys up on the track and his daddy owns a bunch of Charlotte area body shops. Good business to be in when you junk some racecars, I guess.

Anyway, Mr. Faassen tried on two occasions to dump Bobby. Bobby, being the veteran he is, held his ground and brushed it off and kept digging. The third time, however, Faassen accomplished his mission of dumping an “outsider.” Like I said on pit road after the race, if “Dump a Snowball Derby Champion” was on his career checklist, consider it checked off now.

So all the hard work we put in at the shop and at the track went for naught. We knew we had the car to beat, but that's racing. Honestly, I'm sick of “that's racing.” Everyone around here works too hard to have stuff go wrong due to “racing luck.” We know what we're capable of, we think others know what we're capable of, so eventually we'll show it. Saturday was a great example of what we can do, we just got run over by someone that's no stranger to running people over.

Still, Bobby gave us some great help and Dustin and the guys did a great job on the car all day. We'll take what we learned, fix the little bit of damage that happened when we got “Coopered,” and we'll continue down the road looking to swing it all around.

The one good part about Saturday beyond what happened on the #51 car was that our buddies at Hughes Motorsports won the race. Kevin Hughes, owner of Bobby Measmer's #14 Racing Electronics Chevy, is a good buddy of all of ours at BDI, so to see them in victory lane for the fourth time this season was awesome. Like I told Kevin after the race, if we couldn't win it, there's nobody else I'd rather see win it than them.

Another bummer for the race was that we couldn't give our supporters at Buffalo Wild Wings in Concord a trophy after the race, but we'll do it here soon, I promise.

Big thanks again to Racing Electronics, MAC Tools, Chevrolet, ARPBodies.com, Hedman Husler Hedders and all our loyal supporters for sticking with us and all their unwavering support throughout this season here at the BDI shop.

Stay tuned to the website for more on where we're headed next…and come out to the track if you're nearby, because you never know – that race may be the one we turn it all around and we want to see all our fans celebrating in victory lane with us.

Oh, and be sure to check out our Facebook and Twitter pages for updates from the shop during the week and from the track on weekends.

Duke
matt@bdiracing.net