This past weekend saw the season conclude at Spencer Speedway where many of our friends and team members race. When the night had finished the full moon shined on some wrecked equipment and a couple smiling faces.

The good news from the night would be the Hillegeer brothers both placing second in their final points total for 2009. Ryan's hope for a Super Six feature win would be dashed when he would become involved in a multi car crash on the opening lap. Ryan was unhurt but the car was not repairable. Hopefully for 2010 a larger motor will be found so that Ryan can play on a more even ground and snag a long sought after win.

Big brother Kris Hillegeer had a fair night in his Street Stock staying out of trouble and coming home fourth and securing his final standing as well as officially becoming Rookie of the Year. Epic Ventures is giving Kris additional help to see if he can have a more successful run this coming weekend at the Sunoco Race of Champions at Oswego Speedway for Super Stocks. Kris crashed out of this event 2 years ago in a borrowed car. This year Kris hopes the improved handling of his machine will take him to a better finish.

The toughest part of the evening fell on Jody London and his SST Modified. As the team has worked hard and helped Jody run better at each event this year, disaster would strike on lap 13 of the main event when the motor exploded sending oil every where and when the lead cars came around, Jody's disabled vehicle would be hit hard by veteran past champion Buck Catalano. The crash ended Buck's run at the championship but he was more concerned with Jody's welfare after the crash.

This ends Jody's racing for 2009 but you will see him around at several speedways as he continues promoting the Dave London Memorial for Street Stocks at Wyoming County International Speedway on October 3rd. For a further write up on Friday's activities click here: Spencer Speedway - Final Night

The Epic Ventures team would travel to Wyoming County the next day for a long practice session. This was another one of the tracks we would be visiting for the first time with an SST Modified. Terry last raced there in 2001 and although has logged many laps there, figuring out how to make Tom's yellow #50 run there would be a challenge we would eventually conquer. By the end of Saturday we were close to a good set up and by the end of practice on Sunday, we felt ready for some racing. Starting last in the first heat (qualifier), Terry would struggle to finish 6th to everyone's shock. Once again, new tire odd-sizing would be the latest demon to return.

With a lot of careful thought, we took lessons from practice and what happened last time we faced this challenge and correctly surmised what to do. Starting 16th in a 21 car field Terry knew that 100 laps would be plenty of time to move forward and even make additional adjustments if warranted. Patience turned out to be our best strategy as cars crashed and parts failed reducing the field by 1/3 by the half way mark. Also, our changes worked well and Terry marched forward running comfortably in 5th while gaining on the 4th place machine of Kevin Lewis. Around lap 72 Terry noticed the car slowing down and very quickly shutting itself off with a lot of backfiring and small amounts of flame under the hood and exhaust pipes. At first we thought the motor had broke but after shutting off all the electrical accessories the motor re-fired only to die quickly as it came up to race speed. Once Terry had coasted near our pits, you could smell the foul odor of boiling battery acid. The battery had failed. We officially finished 12th but were feeling pretty good about taking a tough old car that hadn't run near the front in several years and giving it its best showing to date.

Next up is the Friday night 100 lap SST Modified special at Oswego Speedway this coming weekend. We have the potent black #5 race ready and hopefully will get a chance to improve upon our run in 2007. We hope you are all enjoying the big year end races. See you there.