Saturday June 9 - Valley Speedway - Grain Valley, MO

The MLRA Thunder Tour rolled to the Valley Speedway and Chris Thundered the field in his heat race from the pole by racing to nearly a half track advantage at the checkers. Our pole starting spot didn't earn us any passing points, so we lined up 5th for the A-main.

 At the drop of the green, Chris scrambled on the bottom of the track, but was shuffled back to 7th at the first caution. Chris used the top side of the track to head forward on the next green flag run, and was 5th at the 2nd caution. On the restart, Chris drove past Denny Woodworth and was racing with Al Purkey for 4th when the caution flew again.

The scorers obviously were sleeping because Chris was ordered to line up behind Woodworth and he had been ahead of him for 2 laps prior to the yellow, but Chris lined up 6th.

On the restart, Chris entered turn one on the low side with Gary Stolba on his outside. Woodworth was in front of Chris and he got a little loose in the middle of turns 1 and 2. Chris checked up and tried to avoid contact, but he got into Woodworth's left rear fender and sent him spinning. Chris restarted in the 5th spot and drove past Purkey into 4th and Stolba for 3rd, but the yellow came out before he was scored ahead and he had to go back to the 5th spot. On the restart, Chris got held up by a fading Jason Bodenhamer and finally worked his way to 4th and set out after Stolba in 3rd.

The final yellow came out with about 10 laps remaining, and Chris worked hard under Stolba for the 3rd spot, but could not make the pass stick. Chris settled into line in 4th and held off a hard chargine Kyle Berck for a hard fought 4th place finish. The track was hard, slick and choppy, but the car was very solid for the first 30 laps or so. Chris overworked the tires trying to clear traffic and they sealed up on the final caution and killed the traction in the car. Chris stated afterward that he was disappointed that he got into Woodworth, saying "I hate that I got into Denny, I tried hard not to get into his fender, but I couldn't get checked up in time and I couldn't move up because Stolba was right beside me. It was a racing deal and I surely didn't do it on purpose." He went on to say, "If we could have just had a long green run early on, I could have at least gotten up to 2nd and maybe I would have had something for winner Alan Vaughn. But we just couldn't get through the traffic. Every time I would get someone passed, the yellow would come out. It was very frustrating." I guess if we are frustrated with a 4th place run in an MLRA race, we must be getting our program heading in the right direction. It was definitely a very solid week for us. If we can continue to rack up top 5 finishes, the wins will come soon. We will keep working hard on the car and racing hard to make it happen!