Friday June 8 - Tri City Speedway - Granite City, Illinois

Chris and Sonny headed south to compete in the UMP weekly show. Chris was driving Mike Crump's 00s machine. Chris started from the pole of his heat race and finished 2nd behind hotshoe Billy Faust to earn a spot in the dash.

Chris started on the tail of the dash and finished 5th to earn the 5th starting spot in the A-main.

The track was getting hard and slick, but there was a solid cushion against the wall in turns 1 and 2 that made setup choice a challenge. Chris elected to tighten the car up and try to use the bottom of the track to make his way forward. In the early laps, the top side of the track was just too good, and Chris slid into the 5th spot and rode high. Chris fell to 6th when one of the local guys put a slider on Chris and forced him to lift or be put in the fence. Chris rode 6th until late in the going when the leaders entered heavy traffic. The top side of turns 3 and 4 had finally slowed down to where the bottom groove was coming in, and Chris went to the bottom and began to move forward. Chris was racing for the 3rd spot on the last lap when a lapped car spun across in front of him. Chris narrowly missed the spinning car and tried to gather the car up exiting turn 2. Chris had lost one spot but was looking at a top 5 finish when Mark Faust made hard contact with Chris's right front wheel and broke the tie rod. Chris limped the car around 3 and 4 and ended up with a 7th place finish.

The car was pretty competitive and we were happy with the way the chassis worked for our first trip there. We didn't feel like the race track was very racy on this night, and we are hoping it is better the next time we go.

The engine in the car was flat, so we will need to do some work there, but we feel like we can get the 00 machine dialed in moving forward.