Ovaltrack Marketing

Stuart Herne's sponsor , Farmer Charlies, is also sponsoring tonight's race, so Stuart will be hoping for a good showing in front of his supporters tonight

Tonight at FM 104.7 Grafton Speedway its the Farmer Charlies Mr Modified Round 2. This series is a very big event for the V8 Dirt Modifieds with 29 of the 600 horsepower V8's nominated. The race is a 50 lap feature with a compulsory pitstop at lap 25. At that point, the crew, which are on the infield, can refuel, make adjustments and repairs. The driver can replenish his tear-offs, and a vital part of the stop is getting feedback from the pitcrew on what the driver may be doing right or wrong on the track. Sometimes these comments are not really very technical or precise, quite often it is something like. " Keep up the top, and you'll get up the front", or " If you keep driving like that, your skirt may blow up in your face".

Something that is also quite interesting is the adjustments that the various crews make to the cars at the pit stop. You are allowed just 4 tyres on the infield. You can play it safe, and have a spare for each corner, or you can take a bit of a punt, and take a variety or left rears, to cater for the track having less grip in the second stint. Some of these crews don't pit too close to each other in the regular pits, in order to keep some privacy in the set-ups, so you could imagine the sideways looks and casual glances at your competition just to see what they are up to when they are pitting just a couple of metres away from their rivals. The real clever guys have either covered up the numbers on shocks and tyres, or they leave it until the very last few seconds to change the car.

The advantage on having a pit stop and separate points for each 25 laps, is that if your favourite driver suffers a failure in the first 25, he is a very good chance of starting the second 25 and charging to the front.

As you may have gathered, we are very excited about bringing the Mr Modified Series to you as there is always something happening. There has been some very memorable moments. Scott Cannon had an awesome battle with USA's Tim Fuller, I can clearly remember starting the second 25 next to Stuart Herne and spinning out at turn 1 to be greeted by the rest of the field very quickly, Shawn Mortimer's Battle last year with Stuart Herne, Mark Robinson's victory after crashing on lap 3, the list goes on and on. Something always happens with Mr Modified.

We have 101 cars nominated in all divisions tonight, a bit of a record for Grafton, which is why we've snuck the start time forward a tad to 6.15.

It should be a great night tonight.
The postponed round 1 will be run at Lismore tomorrow at 6:30.

The deciding round 3 is back at Lismore on New Years Day at 6.30.

28-12-02