Taylor and the 41 team returned to Sunset Speedway saturday night for what they hoped would be a routine night of racing. After putting some fresh body panels on the car this week, the team was hoping for a clean night of racing and to make up some valuable points in the point standings. The team's luck, however, would turn bad early in the 2nd practice session.
After spinning out going into the 3rd turn in practice, Taylor radioed to the crew saying something broke in the motor and he spun out in the oil. Once the car got back to the pits, the crew quickly discovered the timing chain had broke, and were just getting ready to load the car up and go home, when the 87 team of Adrian Foster said they had a spare motor at their shop and said Taylor could borrow it for the night. So the team quickly went to work removing the motor out of the car and getting everything ready to drop the borrowed motor in, in hopes that they would be done before the start of the feature race. Well in less than 2 hours, the team had the motor back in the car and fired up, having only missed one heat race!! It was a great display of teamwork by Fred, Gary, Brandon, Walter and everyone else that helped out!
Taylor would line up 3rd in the second heat race, and was just planning on getting a feel for how the motor was going to run for the feature race. The 10 lap heat race would go caution free, and Taylor managed to maintain his 3rd place starting spot right to the end.
After the heat race, Fred and Gary would make a few minor adjustments to the motor in an attempt to get it dialed in for the feature. Because Taylor missed his first heat race, he would be forced to start near the rear of the 23 car field, rolling off in 18th starting spot. Taylor was determined to put on a show for his crew after all their hard work in the pits all afternoon. Right from the drop of the green flag, he began picking up spots, and by the first caution on lap 5 he was up to 9th place. He continued to move forward following the 47 car of Walters right up into the top 5, bringing home a 5th place finish and making all the crew's hard work worth it in the end!
Congrats to Rob Poole on the feature win!
Very special thanks to the 87 team of Adrian Foster for the use of their spare motor!!
Also big thank you to fellow racer Ralph Sikes for all his help turning wrenches during the motor swap.
Its people like these that make racing such an awesome sport!!
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