Andy Seuss shouldn’t have even been in the starting field for the USG Sheetrock 150 at All-Star Speedway (NH) on Saturday night. Seuss started out the day’s first practice session second-quickest, but after a dozen laps, he mortally wounded the engine in his #70 Stewart’s Automotive Modified.
Without a back-up powerplant in their trailer, or even at that shop, it looked like the team would have to pack up and head home early. But instead, teamwork and cooperation put Seuss in a position to win the race. He eventually finished third.
“We only got 10 laps of practice in before the engine blew,” said Seuss. “That’s unusual for us. These
NuSkool engines that Joey Caraccia builds are great. Something bizarre happened, I’m sure, and he’s concerned about it. He’s already offered to drive up from North Carolina to get the motor and get it back together so that we can have it for next weekend. But that’s alright, we don’t have anywhere to go and race for two weeks.”
They almost didn’t have the chance to race at All-Star. The team checked throughout the pit area for a back-up engine and after coming up fruitless, they worked the phones. Fellow True Value Modified Racing Series regular Gary Casella offered to lend the team his back-up engine if they could come to his Massachusetts shop to pick it up. That’s exactly what they did.
many, many laps. I tried to pass him, but he made his car awfully wide. I was determined to pass him clean, but then we had some trouble under caution, and that kept either of us from winning the race.”
The trouble occurred when the caution came out for the spinning car of Les Hinckley with six laps to go. Seuss had set Christopher up for a pass down low and followed through with it. The caution came and Christopher cut down into the side and front end of Seuss’ machine.
“We were racing hard,” said Seuss. “I knew that the #06 car [Hinckley] was spinning, but the caution had not come out yet, so I went by him [Christopher]. I didn’t touch him. He must have thought that it was wrong, so he came down the backstretch on the outside of me and turned into my right front under caution. That damaged both cars and it took him out of the race. My rim was bent, and I’m sure that there was all kinds of other front-end damage because the car pushed like a truck after the restart.”
With damage that would later be determined as a bent
wheel, broken spindle and toe measurements that were
a full four inches out of whack, Seuss continued. He
fought hard, but third-place with a wounded racecar was
his final result.
“That was unfortunate,” said Seuss. “I really would
have liked to have raced Ted Christopher for the win
instead of having the race settled like that. But we’ll
just have to take it and go on to the next race. We
wanted to win, but we’ll take this. We shouldn’t have
even been racing out there today, but this crew made
it all possible. To have had a chance of winning and to
end up finishing on the podium is amazing.”
Seuss and his team had considered towing out to Oswego Speedway (NY) on Sunday to enter the RoC Modified feature there, but the damage from All-Star Speedway kept that from happening.
“We were thinking about it, but we had the engine problem and now we have some front-end damage,” said Seuss. “So we won’t be going to Oswego now. We’ll be back in two weeks driving Brian Schofield’s #07 in the True Value Modified Racing Series event at Monadnock.”
The True Value Modified Racing Series will race at Monadnock Speedway (NH) on Saturday, May 26th.
“The crew did an awesome job changing the motor,” said Seuss. “They drove an hour to pick up another one and got it back in there. It was great to see the team work like that.”
Seuss missed the other practice sessions and the heat race. He started the feature in the scratch position but wasted little time charging to the front. By lap 16, he was in the top 10. By lap 28, he was in the top five.
“We didn’t get into any of the heat races, so we had to start shotgun on the field. That wasn’t too bad. We came up through and had a shot at finishing first for the halfway break. Then we had a chance at winning the race too. We fought with Ted Christopher for the lead for
