See below for Ben Wandahsega’s race report from teh March 28th and May 30th, 2015 races.
Team Wandahsega has a tough start to the 2015 Season…
The Schuss Mountain Snow Challenge was the first event on our radar to kick off the 2015 racing season. This event keeps getting bigger each year, and this year adding the “Discovery Channel” there for the first time to tape for a later show. We had very high hopes, and looked forward to trying out our new trans brake, along with the added HP from last year’s motor upgrade.
The day of the event promised some good racing, as you drag race with another truck up the massive ski resort hill! The weather was around 35 degrees, and about 5000 people on the hill to watch, sun was out, and the track still had many feet of snow on the hill. The 35” and under class was first up, the track looked to be very hard packed and slippery, making it more of a challenge to get up the hill in a hurry. When it came time for us to get ready, I took the oil heater off, checked the temp, it read over 100 degrees, you never want to “cold start” a race motor, it’s very hard on them. I was ready to go, checked my seat belts, had my helmet, went to start the truck, and for some unknown reason it wasn’t starting??? This has never happened before, we even had 2 other trucks hooked up to the battery, and it still wasn’t starting, then came the final blow, we heard a loud grinding noise, checked it out and found about 8 teeth came off the flywheel, making it impossible to start. Not sure why this happened, had the oil heated, a fully charged battery, and still it wouldn’t go.
What a huge crushing disappointment, in over 20 years of racing, we have never had this happen before, ended up having to withdraw.
Next was Cheboygan, Michigan, the County Fairgrounds. The weather was cold and rainy, like it has been all spring long in Michigan. Our 2 classes didn’t run till the end of the day, modified and the big tire divisions. Class 7, modified; the track was really wet, from all the rain. I made my first pass, wasn’t too bad considering the track conditions, except, I heard a strange noise from the front end. For the next run, the noise was louder and vibrated the front end. When I came out the end of the lane, I only had two wheel drive, thought I broke a hub, but ended up being the spider gears. Our combined time was still descent, 8.46 seconds, ended up with a 5th place finish. The Big Tire Class I had a slower combined time, 10.64, giving us a 3rd place.
Overall both of our first events were disappointing, we are a much better team than our results showed. We will get the truck repaired and ready for St. Ignace on June 27th, last time we did really well there, and they had a few thousand fans turn out too!
We would like to thank all of our sponsors for their continued support:
BDS SUSPENSION
BINK’S COCA COLA
HANNAHVILLE INDIAN COMMUNITY
COZZY’S POLARIS
GENERAL TIRE
TEN FACTORY
HILL TOP RV SUPER STORE
REZZ ROCKET FIREWORKS
MOTIVE GEAR
METHOD RACING WHEELS
DELTA DISPOSAL
TOM’S MUFF-EX
KOBAS ELECTRIC
BENOITS GLASS
LOFHOLM’S BUILDING CENTER
BERGER AND KING
MILWAUKEE TOOLS
NPHPOWERTOOLS.COM
SWEETGRASS GOLF CLUB
