AUGUST 4, 2009 –- This past weekend was another Friday/Saturday affair. Friday returned us to Ocean Speedway in Watsonville. As I have said several times in these write-ups, it is a great track with exceptional racing. 

This was another race in the GLR winged 360 series. This event was especially important to us because we did not want to fall out of the championship points race and also wanted to qualify for the prestigious 50 lap Johnny Key Memorial set to go on August 29th.

Evan set quick time in qualifying and did an excellent job in his heat race and finished first. That was the good news as he went on to draw the 10 pill (the bad news) which gave him a starting spot on the outside of the 5th row for the feature!

The race went green flag to checkered with out a caution and 30 exciting laps later Evan finished in 4th position. At one point on lap 27 he made it to 2nd before being banged from behind and passed by Brent Kaeding and Jason Statler, the eventual winner.

Evan, by virtue of his finish is now qualified for the Key race, an important goal for the team.

The next day we were off to Petaluma Speedway the next stop on the Golden State Challenge King of California Series. Petaluma is a 3/8’s mile track with a real black river bottom type dirt surface. It can be fun but the unpredictable moisture in the track keeps you guessing. On this night Evan guessed correctly and had the car set up very well. He qualified 8th, dominated his heat, easily won the dash and started on the pole of the feature. There was one little problem along the way……… After the heat race we discovered a large amount of water in the oil. With no time for an engine change before the dash we changed the oil and ran the dash. Knowing the water-logged engine would not survive the 30 lap main event we changed it with a lot of help from friends like Ivan Warden, Mark Bristow, Brian Poe, Jason Statler, Cajun and the rest of Statler’s awesome crew.

There was no time to get any heat in the newly replaced engine and it took three laps before the cold motor wanted to run, by this time Evan had slipped to 3rd position. He stayed there until lap 27 where he was passed by Kyle Larson and finished 4th.

Well, there you have it. A pretty good weekend over-all with two fourth place finishes.

As always, thanks for checking in and we hope to see you this Saturday for the next GSC race, the second to last event of this year’s series.

Have a great week

Suggs Family Racing