The Whelen Modified Tour made its first of four stops at Stafford Motor Speedway (Stafford Springs, CT) on Sunday, April 26. Sunday marked the 38th running of Stafford’s annual ‘Spring Sizzler’ event.

The weekend opened, for the WMT, with a mid-morning practice session on Saturday. Time trails followed and, despite a dreaded early draw (the car was just the 6th to take the track) – of the 36 cars on hand – the No. 90 team qualified 23rd fastest.

On Sunday the team participated in Stafford’s Pit Party. The hour-long event provided the thousands of fans in attendance with the chance to meet their favorite drivers and get an up-close look at the cars that would take to the track that afternoon.

Starting the 200-lap race from the favored inside lane, the team stuck to their strategy of just trying to stay out of trouble.

“We approached the race conservatively. We just wanted to stay on the lead lap for the first 150-laps. Then, the plan was to go racing for the last 50,” explained Renee.

Despite a good plan, the day quickly unraveled following contact with the 32 car – on just the 22nd lap. Following a solid trip into the outside retaining wall in turn four, the car was removed from the racing surface – with the aid of two wreckers.

The No. 90 car comes to rest with right-side damage. Photo by Howie Hodge.

“I thought we gave him plenty of room. Apparently not. I don’t know if he got loose and came up into us or if his spotter just cleared him too soon. I don’t really know what the deal was, other than it was way too early for something so stupid to happen.”

Regardless, the team will have the opportunity to try it all again as they return to Stafford on Friday, May 22 for their next WMT event – a 100 lap race. For more information on the event, please visit Stafford’s website.

On Wednesday, April 22, Renee will join a group of promising women racing drivers in learning how to use state-of-the-art motorsport simulation software to advance their racing careers.

In fact, sixteen graduates of the Lyn St. James Women in the Winner’s Circle Driver Development Academy are scheduled to spend time in iRacing.com’s Driver Development Lab located outside Boston (MA).

Under the watchful eye of 1992 ‘Indy 500 Rookie of the Year’ (St. James) and a team of professional driving coaches, the students will learn how to use operator-in-loop simulation software to learn new tracks, become familiar with the performance characteristics of new cars, and make more effective use of expensive real-world track time.

“Driving simulation is already an important aspect of the training regimen of Formula One drivers,” said St. James, founder of the not-for-profit Women in the Winner’s Circle Foundation. “It’s clear that going forward, drivers at all levels of the sport will need to use this cost-effective tool if they want to succeed. With iRacing as the official simulation service for the Academy, we can be certain that our students will have the benefit of the best technology available.”

“Our Driver Development Lab was created for exactly this type of training,” said Scott McKee, iRacing’s vice president of marketing. “And thousands of racers and driving coaches all over the world have already realized just how good a teaching tool our simulation can be. We’re really pleased to work with Lyn and the WWCA to help these women achieve their goals in motorsports.”

In addition to donating the time in the Driver Development Lab, iRacing will provide all of the Academy’s attendees with three-month subscriptions to the company’s internet racing service.

Continue reading »

The 25th season of NASCAR’s Whelen Modified Tour opened with Thompson International Speedway’s annual Icebreaker event on Sunday, April 5 (Thompson, CT).

Renee signs autographs during Thompson's Icebreaker

Before the season got underway, on the previous weekend, the No. 90 team participated in some pre-season testing at Thompson. Unfortunately, after running just a handful of laps, an axle broke abruptly ending the team’s day – and leaving them under the gun facing substantial repairs.

After some late nights in the shop, the team arrived at Thompson on Friday morning to submit the car for NASCAR inspection. On Saturday, despite an unfavorable weather forecast, practice and qualifying went off without a hitch – with Renee qualifying into the tight field with the 21st fastest time of the day (a mere .317 seconds separated the top 25 cars).

Starting the 150-lap race from the inside of the 11th row, Renee initially dropped back. Once she found an outside lane, she worked her way forward. When the caution waved on lap 49, the No. 90 was scored in 14th place. Along with most of the leaders, the team pitted for tires on lap 52. A miscue during the pit stop dropped the car back to the 25th position.

Following a red flag period, for a crew member who was seriously injured during the pit stop action, the field remained under green until lap 115. During that time, Renee worked her way forward, then dropped back during the final run of late-race cautions. In the end, she posted an 18th place finish. For photos from the weekend, please visit our 2009 gallery – all pictures are courtesy of Howie and Mary Hodge.

We learned a lot today. Hoosier has a different tire this year and I think, going forward, we know what changes we need to make in order to keep the car from falling off, explained Renee. I don’t think our finish is indicative of how strong our car was, at times, during the race. We’ll know better for next time.

Actually, all things considered, I think we’re in pretty good shape. Back in January I had some knee surgery, which resulted in a completely unexpected two-month recovery period. My being out of commission for two months really jammed us up – there were a lot of unknowns as the season grew real close.

But, all that’s behind us and things are looking up now. As a team, we have a stronger crew of dedicated and knowledgeable guys than we’ve ever had. As of late, we’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to have some really strong engines under our hood. And, I’m working on some sponsorship deals that should provide us with some additional resources that we haven’t had in years. I’m excited for the possibilities.

Next up, the team moves on to the flat, ½-mile Stafford Motor Speedway (Stafford Springs, CT) for the running of the 38th annual Tech-Net Spring Sizzler presented by CARQUEST. The 200-lap event is scheduled to go off at approximately 2:30 on Sunday, April 26. For more information, please visit Stafford’s website.