|
Practically Perfect Weekend At Vegas Wow, what a weekend Hale Racing had in Las Vegas over the weekend. With previous years in Sin City proving to be slightly low in the "Lucky Department," this year proved to be different. Hale Racing spent almost the entire month of October preparing for this years Fall Classic at the Bullring in the awesome Las Vegas Motor Speedway complex, and apparently it paid off. The team spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of last week just loading the trailer. Making sure nothing was forgotten, Michael created a list two pages in length of what he thought might be needed. They only ended up needing one thing... a starter. Hale Racing arrived at the track Thursday evening and was able to get in a little bit of testing. Michael was able to run fairly good times in the low 16 second range, including a few 16.0's. It seemed to be a good sign to what ended up being a practically perfect weekend. Friday was spent testing and adjusting the car to get it as fast as possible for qualifying. Michael's testing times proved strong all weekend as his lap times were in the top 3 for all three days of racing in Vegas. With 44 cars scheduled to qualify, Michael pulled a high number so he was scheduled to qualify 35th. As temperatures lowered, so did lap times. The #23 car of Dean Kuhn ran a 15.879 early on in qualifying, and was quite a shocker at the time as nobody was anyone near that sort of time throughout any practice sessions. Michael was unaware of any of the times ran before him, and he went out and did what he was supposed to... kept the car smooth, and go easy on the throttle to avoid as much tire spin as possible. It proved to be a good thing when Michael ripped off the weekend's fastest lap with a 15.721 second elapsed time. Even his first lap of a 15.75 proved impressive as the closest lap time to Michael's was still more than a tenth slower. Michael landed himself on the pole and the team was as excited as they've been all season long. When asked if Michael had gotten any sleep on Friday night, it wasn't surprising when the answer was "No, I tossed and turned all night worrying about Saturday's race." $2,500 were up for grabs on Saturday night, and having the pole position was definitely a plus. "We worked hard to get on the pole, now we have to just make sure the car is ready for tonight's race," said Michael during the afternoon prior to Saturday night's race. Michael went out for the first practice of the day and in almost 80 degree weather was still able to run low 16.1 second elapsed times. Only two others were able to do the same throughout the entire day. After knowing the car still seemed to be good to go, the team got ready for the night's race. They didn't run in any other test session and made a few small adjustments before taking to the track. As the time passed, nerves hit harder and everybody on the team had high hopes. It was hard to think of the race ending without Michael finishing up front. "Last year was different for us, we struggled in qualifying, and I started 19th for the feature... so we had nothing to lose, I was a lot less nervous. This year it's our race to lose, I've never been this nervous for a race," said Michael. With a lot of money on the line, and the expectations the entire team had... this was no surprise. When the race finally got underway, things looked a little scary for Michael. The car was incredibly tight and track conditions were a lot better than what the team expected. "I loosened up the car, but I guess it wasn't quite enough, I was awfully worried during those first few laps," said car owner Red Hale. The first time Michael drove the car into turn 1, he quickly knew the car was tight as it pushed through the corner. Cautions haunted the team as more than 11 laps of caution were ran between the 1st and the 16th lap of the race. Michael was able to use his high horsepower motor to create distance down the straight-aways and built quite a few comfortable leads. Just as they grew, a caution would come out and put the second place car of Don Williams right back behind him. However, Michael was excellent on restarts and did an awesome job at creating instant distance once the green flag waved. After the final caution, Michael eventually developed a pretty good lead and caught some lap traffic. The car was still extremely tight so the lap cars proved to be costly as Don Williams began catching Michael. Michael had to use the high side of the racetrack to get by the lap cars as it was very difficult to keep the car on the bottom through the corners. Williams continued to run down Michael. By lap 49 of 50 it wasn't even a car length between Michael and Williams. The white flag waved and lap cars were still ahead of Michael. Michael drove into turn 1 to the high side of a lap car and Williams was all but on the back bumper. Michael made distance down the back stretch and once again had to go up high in turn 3 and out of turn 4. Williams made it interesting and Michael once again used his horsepower to pull ahead and take the checkered flag. All the fans from Utah were happy to see a local guy take the win, and the support was awesome afterwards. Drivers from other teams congratulated Michael and shook his hand. Local drivers, Lynn Hardy and Mark Ith Jr both met Michael at victory circle and shook his hand. Gary Madsen pulled beside him and gave him a big thumbs up, applauding Michael for his efforts. Numerous drivers came over to Michael's pit afterwards and congratulated him as well. "I think I was more excited about qualifying first than I am about winning. This is more of a relief than anything else," said Michael. The team was obviously excited, but I think everyone was in the same boat. We were all relieved that it ended the way we had hoped. The celebration was short and sweet as the entire team was too tired for any partying to take place. All the nerves were gone and the stress of worrying about the way things were going to play out was all said and done. Staying up late and partying wasn't exactly the most appealing thing at the time as the team just finished 3 days of hard work and "worn out" would be an understatement on how the team felt after the weekend's events. Hale Racing would like to thank all those that helped the team prepare for Las Vegas. The success of this weekend would not have been possible without you guys and your hard work is much appreciated. We'd also like to thank all of our sponsors that helped us out throughout the entire year. We could never forget the fans either. We were surprised by the turnout of fans at Las Vegas over the weekend, and to all those that made it out, we thank you. You guys stuck with us all season long, even through the hard luck we experienced and all the problems, our fans and sponsors were still there to help us compete week after week. There's no way we could thank you enough. This win is for all of those that were there cheering for Michael from week one, those that visited Michael after his horrific accident that sent him to the hospital, those that helped rebuild the racecar, those that asked for an autograph, those that came into the shop just to see how things were going. You guys are true fans and this win is for all those that support this race team. As we've said before, without any of you, this sport would never be as enjoyable as it is. Thank you for making this win possible. We ask that all of you will continue to stop by throughout the off season and stay up to date with the plans on the 2006 season. Thank you for stopping by. Short article written by Brad Edwards
Have a question or comment
about this article?
-
Return To The 2005 News
Archives
- Return Home |