Runner Up Finish for Doug Winters at Maple Grove
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<img src="http://i265.photobucket.com/albums/ii209/promodzone/dcw57_1-1.jpg"
<br><font color="Navy">“I think the last time he measure the track temperature it was over 135 degrees. With heat like that you just have to take what the track will give you in performance.” </font>
<p> 7-21-08 KERNERSVILLE, NC Doug Winters and the Winters Racing team went into this past weekend’s Super Chevy Show at Maple Grove Raceway hoping to improve on their Runner Up finish at this same event in 2007. However, instead of improving, they repeated. Doug lost in the final round to Tommy Gray to once again get the runner up spot for the Nitro Coupes Class.
Something that was different this year was the heat. Each day the temperature was well into the 90’s with no cloud cover. This made for a very tricky track. “At one point Allen, my brother and crew chief, just quite bring the temperature gun to the starting line,” stated Doug. “I think the last time he measure the track temperature it was over 135 degrees. With heat like that you just have to take what the track will give you in performance.” Doug and the team went into eliminations on Sunday qualified 4th with a 4.20sec ET. This put the team in the hunt with the top four qualifiers being within just over a 10th of a second from each other.
During first round of eliminations on Sunday, Doug got passed Kevin McCurdy with almost an identical time to his qualifying effort of 4.20sec. For second round Doug would face the number one qualifier Ken Walsh. “Ken had made fast consistent passes all weekend, so we needed to improve on our time to have a chance. But in looking at the prior runs on our Computech DataPro-45 data logger, we knew we were walking a fine line with what the track would hold. We were already at the 30% maximum percentage for Nitromethane, so we needed to look somewhere else for more power.” With that, Doug and his crew decided to increase the blower overdrive to compensate for the hot weather. And just had Doug and his team feared, right off the line, they over powered the track. However, the weekend was not over. Ken Walsh had red lit in the other lane giving the race to Doug. “I did not even know I had won until I was getting out of the car. I was so disgusted that Ken had ran a 4.21sec time and we had beaten ourselves. We definitely got away with one.”
For the final, Doug was paired against Tommy Gray in his Undertaker GTO. Tommy had qualified 2nd and made his way to the final round with a win over Chris Russo. “We decided we would go back to our combination that got is the 4.20s and make sure we got down the track. We definitely did not want to beat ourselves in the final.” The 4.20 combination is just what they did. The car ran 4.22sec. Unfortunately, Tommy was able to make a great run on a tricky track at 4.14sec to take the win. “All in all it was a good weekend. We had some good performance on a tough track. I think we are finally headed in the right direction. I would like to congratulate Tommy and his team. They had a great weekend and deserved the win. They are really are great bunch of guys.”
Winters Racing now turns to their next event looking to improve on this past weekend’s results. As always, the team would like to thank Torco Racing Fuels, Mickey Thompson Tires, NGK Spark Plugs, Optima Batteries, ARP, Amalie Oil, Safe Jacks, and Computech for their continued support.
For more information on Doug Winters and Winters Racing, please visit Winters Racing
<p style="width:310px;float:right;font-weight:bold;padding-right:0px;">
<img src="http://i265.photobucket.com/albums/ii209/promodzone/dcw57_1-1.jpg"
<br><font color="Navy">“I think the last time he measure the track temperature it was over 135 degrees. With heat like that you just have to take what the track will give you in performance.” </font>
<p> 7-21-08 KERNERSVILLE, NC Doug Winters and the Winters Racing team went into this past weekend’s Super Chevy Show at Maple Grove Raceway hoping to improve on their Runner Up finish at this same event in 2007. However, instead of improving, they repeated. Doug lost in the final round to Tommy Gray to once again get the runner up spot for the Nitro Coupes Class.
Something that was different this year was the heat. Each day the temperature was well into the 90’s with no cloud cover. This made for a very tricky track. “At one point Allen, my brother and crew chief, just quite bring the temperature gun to the starting line,” stated Doug. “I think the last time he measure the track temperature it was over 135 degrees. With heat like that you just have to take what the track will give you in performance.” Doug and the team went into eliminations on Sunday qualified 4th with a 4.20sec ET. This put the team in the hunt with the top four qualifiers being within just over a 10th of a second from each other.
During first round of eliminations on Sunday, Doug got passed Kevin McCurdy with almost an identical time to his qualifying effort of 4.20sec. For second round Doug would face the number one qualifier Ken Walsh. “Ken had made fast consistent passes all weekend, so we needed to improve on our time to have a chance. But in looking at the prior runs on our Computech DataPro-45 data logger, we knew we were walking a fine line with what the track would hold. We were already at the 30% maximum percentage for Nitromethane, so we needed to look somewhere else for more power.” With that, Doug and his crew decided to increase the blower overdrive to compensate for the hot weather. And just had Doug and his team feared, right off the line, they over powered the track. However, the weekend was not over. Ken Walsh had red lit in the other lane giving the race to Doug. “I did not even know I had won until I was getting out of the car. I was so disgusted that Ken had ran a 4.21sec time and we had beaten ourselves. We definitely got away with one.”
For the final, Doug was paired against Tommy Gray in his Undertaker GTO. Tommy had qualified 2nd and made his way to the final round with a win over Chris Russo. “We decided we would go back to our combination that got is the 4.20s and make sure we got down the track. We definitely did not want to beat ourselves in the final.” The 4.20 combination is just what they did. The car ran 4.22sec. Unfortunately, Tommy was able to make a great run on a tricky track at 4.14sec to take the win. “All in all it was a good weekend. We had some good performance on a tough track. I think we are finally headed in the right direction. I would like to congratulate Tommy and his team. They had a great weekend and deserved the win. They are really are great bunch of guys.”
Winters Racing now turns to their next event looking to improve on this past weekend’s results. As always, the team would like to thank Torco Racing Fuels, Mickey Thompson Tires, NGK Spark Plugs, Optima Batteries, ARP, Amalie Oil, Safe Jacks, and Computech for their continued support.
For more information on Doug Winters and Winters Racing, please visit Winters Racing
