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As I started to push away from my work desk and head into my racing room for Thursday’s Michigan Circle Track Sim-Racing League event at Concord Motorsports Park, I heard a sound that chilled me to the bone. It was the sudden deafening silence which followed a series of various clicks, pops and crackles as my computer, my wife’s Mac, the refrigerator and the TV in the other room and everything else in the house all switched off simultaneously. It was another neighborhood black-out , caused by an aging underground cable system that had reached its expected end of life about fifteen to twenty years ago. The blackouts in the neighborhood are frequent and unpredictable. Sometimes the power comes back on line within a few minutes, but usually it is in the order of several hours. From the other room I overheard my wife Jill talking to my step-daughter Sarah who was down visiting from Oregon. “Oh this won’t be good. He finished last in yesterday’s broadcast truck race when his engine blew and he should be heading in to start his short track race about now.” Yes, that pretty much summed it up. I was not a happy camper. Frustrated, I went over to the couch and promptly took a catnap.

As luck would have It, this was one of the shorter outages. When the power came back on, I rushed into my race room and brought my system up. I was able to get logged into the server 3 minutes before qualifying started. “Finally he shows up!” Driver and League Administrator Craig Bristol chided me over the voice channel from his home in New York State. I explained the power outage and elected to skip qualifying and start from the back of the field since I had virtually no seat time on the tough little track in North Carolina. From a configuration standpoint, think of Pocono, then flip it over 180 degrees from right to left and shrink it down to a half mile. That’s Concord.

There were a couple of new faces on the starting grid for this 88 lap event. One of those new faces was Brad Mahar from Lansing, MI, driving the No.7. Mahar qualified on the pole with a 16.495 second (109.124 mph) lap. Starting second was Montrose, MI’s Ken Shook in the No.34 with a 16.619 second (108.310 mph) lap. Conspicuously absent from the race was points leader John Hernly who was, “getting an early start on building a shed up North.”

There were three cautions periods during the race. The first was on lap 4 when Doug TerMeer in the No.91 clipped the apron in turn two and spun out with an assist from Bristol’s No.3. The second was on lap 11 when Kalamazoo’s Phil Loedeman in the No.0 spun after getting into turn one. Tom TerMeer in the No.61 also spun avoiding Loedeman’s car. They were both able to continue on, none the worse for wear. During this caution KC Foote’s car started to smoke. Foote who was not involved in the incident has simply suffered a mechanical failure, his night over with a broken header. Doug TerMeer in the No.91 scored the lucky dog and got back on the lead lap. Loedeman ran another 10 laps before transmission problems forced him to retire early.

The final caution fell on lap 67 when Tom TerMeer drove into turn one hard in an effort to take the third place position away from Bristol in the No.3. TerMeer was unable to keep his No.61 on the bottom and started to spin as brother Doug drove on past. Tom wrinkled the nose on his Chevy after bouncing off the outside wall. The yellow flag set up a round of pit stops for a number of drivers to take on fresh tires for the final run.

The race restarted with 15 to go and the gloves were off. Mahar was first, new MCT-SRL driver D. Smillie, second position, Shook in the No.34 third and Bristol in the No.3 in the fourth position. Those were the only lead lap cars. Throughout the race, Mahar in the No.7 had never really been challenged for the lead, but every other position was a knock-down, drag-out fight. When the green flag dropped, Bristol who had a couple of lapped cars between him and third place Shook, was a man on a mission. Bristol worked his way through the field, grabbing the second spot from Smillie after only five laps. Bristol ran his fastest lap of the race with three to go in an effort to chase down first place Mahar. Unfortunately for Bristol, the 4.25 second lead that Mahar had racked up while Bristol was negotiating traffic was too much to overcome and Mahar went on to secure the win. Due to John Hernly’s absence however, Bristol was still able to narrow John Hernly’s lead to only 79 points.

MCT-SRL Srandings After 6 Races