8/14/2011
Joshua Hodges
Hodges Motorsports Update - Sandia Speedway
It was wild last night when the NMMRA wingless sprint cars took to the highbank 3/8 Sandia Speedway. 27 cars showed up for the show, and I started the night pullin pill 6 to start outside the front row of my heat race. After a couple retries on the initial green, I got to the lead and was able to make a gap while others fought for position behind me. After a yellow on about lap 3, I went back to the bottom, and was passed around the top. The next lap I carried my car top shelf but it was too late and I finished the heat in 2nd. That was still enough points to make the top 8 redraw in which we drew the 1 pill to start on the pole. Even after watering the track, there where holes and dust through the middle of each corner. I got a bad start in some slimy stuff on the bottom, and could not get up on the racetrack until I fell back to 4th. The track had one groove up around the top and it was basically follow the leader. At about the midpoint of the race, I was able to slip by 3rd place when he went off the end for just a second. The track was starting to get really dusty and hard to see from the ruts and from the infield. It finally got to one point where you had to go through one corner literally blind for about 4 laps, until somebody got into the fence when they couldn't see and several others piled in, including the top 2 cars. The wreck was bad and the track was definitely too dangerous to continue racing on. After the race was over, we took the yellow and checkers together to win the race. It is certainly not the way we wanted to grab a win, but we got to take it. We were glad to hear that nobody was severely injured during the wreck, and we hope that Kyle Mccutcheon and his family was not shaken up too badly by the violent hit. We have a few options for racing next weekend, but we are still undecided on which way we will head.
Back to News