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POSTED March 11th, 2011| EMPIRE RACING LLC
I have been busy working on the dirt pro stock getting ready for the dirt season to start here at my home track Orange County Fair Speedway in New York. I’m planning to run a partial schedule as my focus is with Empire Racing and our first full season in the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards. The ARCA Racing Series has gone through a lot of changes over the past two years and so has our family-owned team. From fans, people and even sponsor have come and gone. We at Empire Racing slowly filtered out the strong from the weak and I feel like we have a great bunch. Any change(s) are tough but it only makes our organization better. The best feeling after the checkered flag flies is knowing that everyone puts their best foot forward, working together like clock work and have fun doing it. If no one enjoys its, what’s the point of doing it, right? On dirt we have the moody mile up at Syracuse, New York. Sometimes you unload the cars prefect from the get go as the car and the track just seem to get along, and everything runs smoothly all week and race. After coming back to Daytona a second time, last year it seemed that we unloaded and we were content with the car in practice and had a great car in the race. This year from practice on we just could not get our silver No. 82 Empire Racing Ford Fusion to get along with Daytona right down to race time. Crew chief Richard Johns, team manager John Bellesfield and the rest of the Empire Racing crew worked endlessly to improve the car’s performance. The car was very strong – though it did not want to work with the historic 2.5-mile speedway like last year’s car, making Daytona this year a moody 2.5-mile oval. Coming out of Daytona with a 15th place finish is great, finishing any race is always a great finish, even though I know that the team would have enjoyed a stronger finish I now at the end with a big suspension component failure Richard (Johns, crew chief) is going to be making the car as strong and better then last years car for Talladega next month. Richard is extremely knowledgeable about reading the car and my feedback to make the car at any race track better. Unfortunately, we lost a super fast race car at Talladega last year, but after Daytona, the team is working out the bugs with our current speedway car to arrive in ‘Dega with an ever stronger car than last April. There is little hesitation in my mind that we’ll be strong in this race too. With an open ARCA Racing Series test on the horizon, we will be ready to put the changes to the test and see if the car responds good, great or better. Until then I have been working for our family’s bus company doing everything from paper work to driving school busses and even piloting the company’s tow truck. Its been a long winter to and have been doing lots of snow plowing, getting away to 50 and 60 degree days in Daytona was kind of a treat. Quickly though, it was back to reality. When I am not working, I have been hanging out on the farm riding four wheelers, riding horses, and fixing up my brother in-laws diesel pickup with a lift kit, and helping him with a restoration on his dad’s vintage mini cooper. We are stuck right now until an order of racing crate engines comes in to finish up my dirt car. Thankfully, we don’t really plan in doing much to it right now besides changing the engine out and replacing the rear springs. In time, it will be ready to sling and slide in the dirt! Take care for now and thanks for reading this edition of Straight from the Corr. Keep It In The Gas,
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