Neither Rain, Snow or Blown Engines Keep Andy Seuss Down

But that’s not what the team is about. Their dedication was rewarded when Seuss started last in the final TVMRS race of 2005 and came through the field to finish a strong third on Sunday. It was a fitting end to a long week and a half of setback after setback.

The race was first scheduled for last weekend, but got rained out. On Saturday, it was pushed back another day because of a snowy mix of wintery weather. That worked out good for the team because it gave them time to chase down their motor demons.

“We found some things wrong with our primary motor last week and put in our back-up motor,” said Seuss. “Once we got to the track, we found that it was starting to knock so we shut it down and were done for the day. We blew a lifter and couldn’t find all of the parts and we knew they were running around inside the engine. We didn’t want to hurt it worse. We got home and started tearing apart those engines and knew that we weren’t going to have those fixed for the weekend.”

The #70 team then turned to team owner Jerry Morello, who also owns Eddie MacDonald’s #77 NASCAR Busch North team, for some assistance.

“We borrowed one of Jerry’s [Busch North] motors. It was the one that they ran at Dover and they thought it had a broken rocker. It turned out that the cam came off timing and bent a lot of stuff. Then we were out of motors. We rented one from Jack Bateman and met him on Thursday to get it. We put it in on Friday and it worked out good for us that Lee was rained out on Saturday. We got an extra day to finish it. We put it in and it was a good stout piece. It all worked out good.”

Early in the 100-lap event, it looked like Seuss’ race would go just like his week leading up to it. But as the laps clicked off, things started going better and better for him.

“At the beginning of the race, I was told that I was within a quarter of a turn of going down a lap. I was trying to save my car, but then I turned it on and went. I made up a half-track on the leader and started coming through the pack. By the time that the first caution came out, I was in seventh. We went from 26th to seventh in 60 laps. We kept picking away and found myself in third at the finish.”

It wasn’t Seuss’ only third place of the afternoon either. The 18-year-old driver also finished on the podium in the 350 Supermodified feature after driving the #10 of Mike Ordway, Jr., who was tied up racing a NEMA Midget at Thompson Speedway (CT).

“That was a tough race,” said Seuss. “I got held up bad by some erratic traffic. I couldn’t exactly take matters into my own hands and those cars are very aero sensitive. They get real tight when you are up behind someone. Once I was by myself, I was 2/10ths quicker than anyone else. I want to thank the Ordway family for giving me the chance to run their car.”

Seuss and his team planned on going to this coming weekend’s North vs. South Shootout at Concord Motorsport Park (NC), but that event is still a question mark until they figure out their current engine situation.

“We’re looking at going to the Shootout if we have a motor to go down there with,” said Seuss. “We’re looking into that. If we run the same motor, we’ll be all right. We’ll do some weekly maintenance and load the car back up. If not, we’ll do what we can. If it takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of work. That’s not anything that this team is afraid of.”