Wheatland 25 Race Recap

Wheatland, MO – We had a very tough weekend. We lined up 5th, which was far from the qualifying round we had expected. But we were happy that our new fans performed in practice and kept our temperatures balanced.

When the green flag dropped for round 1, we shot off the grid around the spectacular new track, but on the 1st lap, in turn 2, a competitor drove over the right side of our race vehicle and damaged the back end of our chassis. We had a good restart, but 1 lap later our race ended with spiked water temps and no power to the battery.

With a frustrating round 1 behind us, we pulled up our bootstraps and got ready for round 2.

Since we weren’t sure how significant the damage to Maverick was from round 1, we pulled out our backup truck (99) and started round 2 in the back.

Our 99-truck proved to be very fast and with the data showing a 1:16 lap time during our shakeout which was the 2nd fastest lap recorded for the weekend. But on lap 3, we started losing power steering and contacted a competitor to result in a flat left rear tire. Our pit crew got us back out on the lead lap to take the green flag with the pack, but no power steering made the truck inoperable. We pulled off to watch the checkers drop from the sideline and later found a fastener had broken and rubbed a hole in our power steering line causing us to lose all pressure and fluid.

We learned a lot this weekend about our trucks, our team, our competitors, and our series, and we will be back in round 3 & 4 more prepared, stronger, and smarter.