ron.brown11

Hey Rodney, I know that it won't mean anything to him, but please let him know that it was a pleasure to watch him run this week. I sure wish he hadn't had that flat tire in the first race. It's obvious that he is a good wheelman. Hopefully I'll get to see him run in person. Thanks!

Yeah he drove away on every restart, and after a couple of laps, he'd be between 2-3 seconds ahead. He should be running those Jett cars all the time. They're fast and he can wheel them. Like I said above, if not for that flat tire, he would have won the championship.Jones' first win of the week was the one that Ryan was running 2nd, then cut that tire, Ryan out pointed Jones in all other races. And I never saw him rough anybody up. I was amazed at how consistant he could keep his lap times when he wasn't stuck behind slower traffic. He's very smooth. Also, he was in the top 3 in lap times to set the grid for every race, 2 of which were pole wins. I was very impressed with how clean he races. Jones on 3 of those restarts tried using Ryan up a bit. I was expecting him to return the favor. He did not.

Ten minutes after Ryan Luza won the Hart 100 race, it started drizzling. Then a bit harder, and finally they canceled the race for this year. Big Money Matt Hirshman won every tour modified race this week. Making him the only driver to ever do that. All of the races except 1 were 35 lap mains. The John Blewett III race was 76 laps (John's number). But tonight's race was the one that Matt was looking forward is the Evans 100 lap event, as he loves the longer races. Over the years he's won 4 or 5 of the Blewitt races, and 5 or 6 of the Richey Evans races. But Matt is the only driver to ever sweep the week in the tour mods. Matt also won the championship !! Great week Matt!!!

What a shame that Ryan had that flat from second place, in the opening race at New Smyrna. He started 3rd for the 100 lapper, took the lead on lap 4, and lead the rest of the race. They had 6 restarts, mostly during the middle laps. Conner Jones was very strong on a couple of them, but wasn't ever able to complete the pass. Jones ended up winning the championship, and was strong all week. He won 2 and Ryan won 2. The difference for the championship was that opening race. Great week Ryan!! It looks like John Aramendia finished 16th, but I'm not positive on that. They pulled the leaderboard off the screen with 2 to go. If that stands, then this was his best finish all week.

I don't know if Jett Motorsports has changed all of their cars, but the car that Ryan has raced all week is a Mustang.

Ryan started 4th, and finished 2nd. If he had 5-7 laps more, I think he could have won. The winner was Katie Hettinger. She's 14 or 15, and runs for the Anthony Campi race team, and teammates with Casey Roderick. Casey won last night in the super late models. Katie is from Michigan, but races at Hickory Motor Speedway in NC. She's already has the most wins for a female there in the Pro LateModels. She just might be a female driver that has a future in say the Craftsman Truck series, or possibly the Xfinity series. And I'm not talking the other failed female drivers we've seen, A la Danica and that chick in the truck series. Hettinger looks like a pretty good wheelman.At the start of Monday's feature, she ended going airborne over the nose of another car do to a stack up. Pitted, fixed it, and started in the back. Finished 8th, but was running 3rd and got turned. She ran I believe 2nd last night. John Aramendia finished 18th, but it was a short field.

One of these days, God Willing, I'm going to FL for the derby, and stick around FL for a couple of months to see the 9 days of nightly races at New Smyrna. Just think, 4 days in Pensacola , the 9 days at NS. We shall see...

It was the Governor's Cup race that Ryan smoked the field. But I can't remember if it was last season or the year before. It was a 150 lap event.

I haven't seen him race in person. I can't remember if it was last year at NS, that he simply smoked the field. As I have said numerous times on here, I try to highlight TX racers that are racing out of the area. When I posted how well he did, I got some posts questioning his abilities. Asking if it was an I Racing race. Every time I've seen him race, if the car stayed under him, he finished well or won. So other than what I've seen online, I have no idea what those posters were talking about. I don't recall ever seeing him out of control, racing over his head, or tearing up his equipment. Seems to be a pretty smart racer. It took me a bit to reply, I was watching the Tour Modifieds run the John Blewett III Memorial. Matt Hirshman has won 3 of the 4 shows. The qualifying got rained out for Sat's race, and he isn't a Tour competitor all season. So the started using last year's points standings. I think he started like 19th. Finished 3rd. That guy is a wheelman! John Aramendia ran the Pro Latemodel feature earlier tonight. He finished way back near 20th. He's driving Ben Kennedy's car. I really expected better, because Kennedy usually has good stuff. But he has looked awful all week. I'm hoping that it's been the car. Ben is Lisa France's son. I'm sure that he isn't short on cash. Hopefully it will get better for him this week.

Nice!

It took almost an hour to get that 35 lap feature completed. I could tell that Ryan had a fast car, they just couldn't get more then 3-4 laps without a yellow. At halfway Ryan had a great restart, and the rest was caution free. That should put him in good shape for tomorrow's main. I think tomorrow's race is longer, but no sure on that. Ryan has been fast all week though. Hopefully he can keep it up.

Except for the young lady I that interviewed Ryan, 3rd place finisher Connor Jones the was first person to Ryan's car. He genuinely seemed happy for Ryan. It was those 2 that were racing each other on the first night, when Ryan cut a tire down. Nothing that Jones did, as it appeared that Ryan ran over something. Jones has a big lead in the championship in the Pro Latemodels. Good to see Ryan get another podium finish, and the win.

Ryan took the lead on the restart, and ran away with it. His lead at the end was almost a straightaway. Nice run!!

Well Ryan had a bad qualifying lap today. He only qualified 2nd. He started 5th due to the invert. It has taken 30 minutes just to get the first 5 laps completed. After 18 laps, there have been 6 cautions. The good news is that Ryan is up to 2nd, and was beside the leader on the front stretch when the yellow came out. We'll see how the rest of the race goes, but Ryan is looking race.

Very impressive!! So exactly which one of those many endeavors did you give up on? Were you told to quit any of them? I'm going to take a guess and say not many of them. But wait, there's sooo many of them, something had to be given up on. So who told you to give up on them? I'm also certain that through all of your resume, you discovered something. Racing is hard, unless you've got a silver spoon/shovel shoved up your ass. And even then it's still hard, but that's usually because the silver spoon holder isn't that smart, talented, or dedicated. So exactly why would you tell people to give up on what they want to do? I will give you that you probably have more laps than me, as I only raced asphalt, drags, and some stupid stuff I did on a rice rocket on the street. But I also managed to be a really good fighter jet crew chief (I never lost a jet), Quality Assurance inspector on those fighters, and an aircraft crash investigator for the Air Force. Then I spent the last 5 years of that supervising the entire work force at Laughlin AFB before retiring. I had to manage approximately 360 workers, with 255 jets. Trust me, working on jets is a lot easier then trying to get a bunch of useless union workers to do their job. That too took about 35 years. Yeah, those things weren't easy either. I don't claim to be the best at anything. I'm just willing to work harder and smarter than most. As my late parents found out about 6 decades ago, don't tell me I can't do something. Because if I want it bad enough I surely will, and I'll figure out how to do it, and do it well. But since I've have 25 surgeries over the last 15 years (18 have been orthopedic, I'm probably done driving. But with the right circumstance, I could get back into ownership, if I so desired. But I'd want a driver & crew member that wouldn't quit, just because racing is hard, or someone told them to quit. So Josh42, we can disagree, and I'm fine with that. But I am not good with you trying to tell me I can't do what I wish to do, or try to accomplish. You don't get to do that. As I said the very first time I ever commented about dirt & asphalt racing on this site. I love asphalt racing best.I like dirt racing ok, but don't want to watch/participate. I have no problem if you want to race dirt, watch dirt, or play in he dirt, as I hold no animosity toward those that wish to, or even dirt spectators. And I would never tell someone that they can't race what they want to race. So the odds are long at getting an asphalt track up & running. But I will tell you this, it is infinitely harder do get something done, if everyone is telling you no, it's not going to happen, or if they are openly trying to stop. But I promise you this. I won't stop posting the longing to bring back asphalt racing to TX. If that is troubling for you, My give a damn is busted. But I will wish you well in your dirt adventures.

Well, I guess that's it! Asphalt racing is now on life support in TX, and Josh 42 says to pull the plug. So anybody that wants to see asphalt racing in TX now must just give in and go to the dirt tracks. Well I choose not to. I will instead choose to watch what I choose to watch. If that's online, so be it. It's not my first choice, but it will have to do. I'm sure that the dirt tracks will survive without my money. Unlike you Josh, I hope they do survive. As Nick can attest to, I used to make a 400 mile roundtrip from Del Rio to CTS. I worked on Friday nights to midnight (sometimes even later), and had to be in Uvalde by 6:30am. I usually didn't get back home until about 4am Sunday morning. There were many 24 hour days on about 3 hours of sleep. Hell, even after I wasn't crew chilling for a modified anymore, I still made as many trips to CTS as I could. There were a lot of weekends that I didn't see my family, so my wife was pretty happy about that. But I did it for the love of it. And I have never told anybody to just give up on what they wanted, because I didn't think it was possible. It begs the question, are you a racer Josh42?

I still think that a track at COTA makes the most sense. We were discussing the ROI on investment a few months ago. I said then, and don't see anyway to make it better. It will take at a minimum OF 5-10 years to get ROI. So those owners would have to be in it for the long haul. Unfortunately there just aren't a lot of people with that kind of cash that will stick it out. The only thing that I can think of to get that ROI faster, is by making that venue another source of revenue, with something that the track isn't already bringing, to go along with the stock car racing.It can be done if the TMS/COTA footed the bill to build the track. I truly believe that between Austin, SA, Houston & Corpus, could give a good car count to get it started. I'm sure that there are folks that Nick, Rodney, Mike Peters that do have contacts. If they could give that support, I think the DFW area would also be able to join us here eat COTA. If done right, I'd be willing to bet that getting some cars from the Deep South is a real probability of drawing cars. If that happens, then OKC becomes a possibility. If this "new" track can have similar rules packages, to the other tracks, it wouldn't be hard to attract out of staters. Get the purses right, and don't try and cut the other tracks' throats. Hell if done right, I could see a series that runs say at COTA, Houston, South Alabama, & Five Flags. Or put together shows that rotate like once a month to each of the tracks, and then have a championship to for that want to run them all. Have a separate points found for it. With a common sense rules package, that doesn't obsolete what racers all ready have, and decent purses, it can be done. Make the tire package a very hard compound, so that spending a $100 grand a season on big engines and expensive shocks won't be necessary. But even if they do want to spend like that, the tires are going to be the great equalizer. I truly do believe that this is possible, but even under the best circumstances, it won't be easy

Again, Ryan was fast qualifier for tonight's 50 lapper. Started 8th due to the invert. He made his way uptown 2nd. The car definitely looked better then last night. John Aramendia's car looked like last night.He finished in the mid 20s I think. The scoring crawl wasn't working very well.

Ryan was fast qualifier tonight. With the invert he started 7th. He only made it up to 5th though by the end. The car didn't look as hooked up tonight as it did last night before the flat. John Armendiawas in this race, but went a lap down about lap 18. He finished in the mid 20s.

Saturday's races were rained out in Tampa.

Kayden found a line with about 25 laps to go, that I had never seen anybody run before, and lived to tell about it. He would run the entire lap a half groove up from the second groove. He was fast there. Said after the race that he wished he'd have found that much sooner. I was sure that he was going to go off roading at any minute. It shows that he's good at racing dirt, because he looked like he was ripping the top on dirt. They don't have walls around the outside the track except for the front straight. The broadcast announcer mentioned that Kayden was running a truck at Daytona next week. This guy has a great future, if he can keep putting the finances together. There was a nice article on him a few months ago in Speedway Illustrated.

I know that's who he ran for before, I just hadn't seen a complete entry list to see the team owner for this year. It's a shame that he cut down that tire, as he was looking good even though he had dropped back to 2nd.

Ryan led the first 17 laps in his first main event at New Smyrna. He got passed on lap 18, then blew a right front tire a couple of laps later. He did a great job of not pounding the turn 2 wall. It looks like he doesn't have too much damage, and should be ok for the next night of racing. I'm not sure who's car he is driving, and will try and find out.

Honeycutt finished 3rd at Florence SC in the Ice Breaker125. Good, clean race!

Erb had a good race going at East Bay in Tampa. With 18 laps to go he shredded a right rear. He made it back to 16th. Before the flat, he was ripping the top, and passed a lot of cars. Hopefully he'll have a better night tomorrow. Hudson O'Neal won his second race in 24 hours there. A lot of people were saying that Rocket chassis' aren't that great anymore. Don't tell Mr Richards, as they won all 5 features so far.We'll see if they get the sweep tomorrow. Had it not rained out at New Smyrna, I doubt that I'd seen this race.