Lonnie Wheatley, CLUTE, Texas (July 14, 2016) – Saturday night’s $7,500 winner’s share could go a long way towards turning Aaron Reutzel’s fortunes back in the right direction.
Reutzel enters this weekend’s $7,500-to-win NSA Shootout double at Billings Motorsports Park coming off a rash of rotten luck in the Shark-powered Dissolvalloy Downhole Revolution/BC Fundz No. 87 Triple-X Sprint Car.
In the last two weekends of Lucas Oil ASCS competition, Reutzel has suffered three consecutive DNF’s after posting a fifth-place finish in the Fred Brownfield Classic at Grays Harbor. And that fifth-place finish concluded with a destroyed race car, if that gives a hint as to how ill the fortune has been.
“I guess we’re paying for all the good we had last year,” Reutzel said in reference to the 2015 season when he drove the Wren Motorsports/Momentum Racing Suspensions entry to the Lucas Oil ASCS National championship.
Reutzel was running third in the Fred Brownfield Classic preliminary event on Friday night, July 1, until a bolt broke on a radius rod late in the feature.
“I couldn’t hardly steer it, we fell back to fifth and didn’t get locked in,” Reutzel recalls. It got worse after he took the checkered flag. “I lifted getting into one and the car spun. The car behind me plowed me, then it seemed like a minute later the car running last hit me too.”
The damage was extensive.
“It killed everything,” Reutzel says. “The car, the engine, everything was junk.”
While no more killed cars, Reutzel and the Danny Sander Construction/ButlerBuilt team have been plagued by problems since.
On night two of the Fred Brownfield Classic, Reutzel suffered a broken lifter in the spare engine after the primary piece was damaged in the post-race crash the night before. “We could have maybe borrowed an engine from someone, but we were just so frustrated and decided it probably wasn’t worth it."
Action shifted to Montana’s Gallatin Speedway in Belgrade last weekend, but it seemed that Reutzel still had a grizzly on his back at the Grizzly Nationals.
“We broke a rocker running fifth the first night,” Reutzel says. “And then we were running fifth again the second night and blew a right rear tire.”
It’s a trend that of bad fortune that can’t end soon enough for Reutzel and the Wright Way Logistics/Walker Performance Filtration team.
Hopefully, it begins with a $7,500 payday at Billings Motorsports Park on Saturday after Friday night’s $2,000-to-win preliminary.
“We definitely need it right now,” Reutzel wraps up.
2016 Quick Stats: 53 races, 3 wins, 13 top-fives, 24 top-tens.
Up Next:
Friday and Saturday – NSA Shootout at Billings Motorsports Park in Billings, MT.
Keep Track: Keep track of Aaron Reutzel’s on-track action including schedule and results at http://www.aaronreutzelracing.com/, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Aaron-Reutzel-Racing/117666254913127 or on Twitter at @AaronReutzel. You can also e-mail Aaron at aaronreutzel@yahoo.com.
If you would like Aaron Reutzel Racing press releases e-mailed directly to you, send your e-mail address to Lonnie Wheatley at lonniewheatley@gmail.com.
Penning the recurring series of “The Wheatley Chronicles” articles on www.sprintcarmania.com, Lonnie Wheatley provides media, public relations and more for select tracks, drivers and events. For more information, Wheatley may be contacted at lonniewheatley@gmail.com.
- administrator on Jul 14, 2016
- Article Date: 7/14/2016 by Lonnie Wheatley