With the Gremlins of Knoxville looming, Team Crown Racing and Jody Rosenboom were looking to familiar territory and the Jackson Nationals to return to form.
Night one of racing action would pit the #27 in the strongest heat of the night and a 6th starting position. “We had a decent start there, but it got to where we were four wide entering turn 1 and it was almost a situation where I kinda closed my eyes and prayed for the best and it worked out”, said Jody. Starting 6th in the feature, Jody quickly made his way up to 3rd, and eventually faded back to 6th for his final spot. “Our motor just wouldn’t run like it should”, team owner Jason Johnson says. “Jody did a heck of a job driving and I knew with the late cautions and the cars that were starting to get up there that we were a sitting duck. For the way that motor ran, we were lucky to stay in 6th at the end.”
Saturday would bring a new night and new hope. Jason Johnson sums the evening up: “We busted our tails in the shop all day Saturday to try and diagnose and fix whatever problem we had with the engine along with all of the other regular maintenance that goes along with the car. We finally got that thing to run good again which was a pretty big relief for me again. We had an awesome heat race there with Scott Winters which fortunately we came out on top of and had a great starting spot for the feature which was 4th. After that, we were fairly loose, but Jody could lean on the cushion and make up for quite a bit of that. He really did a heck of a job holding off charges by some excellent drivers on a few restarts there and once we could get in the clear and run we really felt like they weren’t a challenge to us. About 3 laps before our tire blew I could see the car was acting differently. It was getting really tight and you could see it rolling clear over on the right rear tire. Those guys took advantage of that pretty quickly and then BAM! A blown right rear tire killed our night! I’m certain we were at least a top 5 car and possibly could have been in the top 3, who knows though….there were a bunch of really good cars all right there that were all about the same speed so it would have depended on how traffic played out. In the end it wasn’t the finish we liked, but it was a good night.”
Team Crown would like everyone to keep Steve Henderscheidt in their prayers. Steve has been hospitalized for about a month with pancreas problems.