Engine Woes Halt Budzo Racing’s Trip to Mississippi Thunder Speedway

Unfortunately for our team, the trip to Mississippi Thunder Speedway ended a lot sooner than we had anticipated. We made the trip on Wednesday afternoon, making the long haul out west and rolled the car off the trailer for practice.

The track as unlike anything I’ve raced on to this point in my career. It felt like a mixture of Thunderhill Raceway’s configuration with banking similar to 141 Speedway.

During my 1st practice session, I got the feel for how to drive the track. Basically, it was holding the throttle pretty much wide open all the way around the track. We didn’t make any adjustments for the 2nd practice session, but our night and weekend would end abruptly during that run.

I came into turn 1 of the track, and saw my oil pressure light come on as I was exiting the 2nd turn. After shutting the car down, I could see the trail of oil around the track, knowing that things didn’t look promising.

After inspecting the damage, we believe something shot through the oil pan, opposed to the engine actually failing. We were offered a motor from Mahlik Racing, but after weighing our options, we felt it was best to head home and hope to have our engine repaired for Luxemburg Speedway’s Fall Classic next weekend.

If we can make it out for Luxemburg’s special, it will be our final weekend of racing for the 2012 season. Our plans for the 2013 season will go on as planned, we just may be looking for a new or used powerplant during the offseason.

Remember you can find Budzo Racing on the web at budzoracing.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/budzoracing, on YouTube at youtube.com/budzoracing and on Twitter at twitter.com/budzoracing.