This past Saturday Hurricane Hank and team found ourselves in Lancaster, SC for the first Open Wheel Race the track has ever had. We all hoped our luck would carry over from the last few weeks as we entered the track. As we rolled across the track surface into the facility we all noticed the same thing….these were the longest straightaways we’ve ever seen. We were all nervous about what to expect.

Since we had never been on the track before, never raced on hard Goodyear tires or raced with a 5” spoiler we took a shot in the dark for the initial hot laps. During hot laps it became quite clear we didn’t have the right gear selected. The car just bogged down on the tacky red clay surface and was very slow coming up off the corners.

After hot laps Hurricane Hank and team quickly made a gear change and thought we would try the same gear we run at Dublin and Fayetteville. As Hank staged the car, all we could do was to wait and wonder. As Hank took to the track in the P&M Performance/Williams Plantwork open wheel to the track, we all had our fingers crossed. Hank turned that big half mile track in 21.80 seconds to take the outside pole for the feature. An excellent improvement over practice.

During the break from qualifying to the race, we discussed how hard we had to turn the engine on the track and decided on one more gear change for the feature. Again, after making the change we waited for the feature. As Hank rolled out for the feature, we knew all the changes we could do was done and the racing was in Hurricane Hanks hands to see what he could do.

As the green flag flew, Hank settled into second place chased the leader for the remainder of the race. During the last few laps Hank started to reel in the leader as leader started to become tighter and tighter in the corners, but we ran out of time and had to settle for second.

Overall it was a tremendous night for Hurricane Hank and the team. We knew we brought a knife to a gun fight since the rules stated any engine size, aluminum heads and roller cams were allowed. We had none of those and ran our small engine that we race with at Dublin and Fayetteville. The fact that we had never ran on that track and those tires before felt good, especially since the drivers in front of us and behind us had practiced several weekends before the event. We finished a car length behind the race winner and half a straight in front of third, so overall a successful weekend.

This weekend it’s off to Dublin Motor Speedway!!

Hurricane Hank would like to Thank Lancaster Motor Speedway for putting on the show, excellent track conditions and fast work by the track officials and crews. This was one of the best run shows we’ve ever been to!

We would also like to Thank P&M Performance Racing Engines, Williams Plantworks and SSR Racing for helping us make this possible.