When the Rayhall Motorsports/Sippel Racin’ team made plans to go 360 racing with the USCS Sprint Cars in the southern US over this late fall and winter months, saying they had no expectations would be an understatement. A series with so many unknowns was sure to throw plenty of curveballs at the 14R crew, and it did not disappoint.
The opening night of a doubleheader began on a high note, with Rayhall muscling his way past Lynton Jeffrey into turn 1 and into the lead of Heat #2 at the already dry slick ¼ mile bullring. However, it wouldn’t last very long after Rayhall misjudged how far Jeffrey was behind and drove too hard into turn 3 and pulled a full 360 spin, but recovered and raced his way back to 4th, advancing to the 25 lap feature.
The A Main didn’t start well at all. A massive lap one pileup in front of the 13th starting Rayhall left the Woodstock, GA native with nowhere to go and slammed his right rear nerf bar into another car and bicycled over the infield grass. Rayhall pulled into the work area and crew chief Randy Sippel and the rest of the crew went to work hammering and cutting the broken nerf bar. Their quick work would be rewarded on the ensuing restart with their driver moving through the field like a knife through butter. In fact, after restarting 20th, Rayhall would advance all the way to his original starting spot in 13th and fight on the outside of the top ten briefly before finishing in that same 13th position. A night of great recoveries ended with the car (mostly) in one piece.
Night two kicked off with the 14R starting 3rd in Heat #3, and immediately the crew and Sean both knew there was some issue. On the start, Rayhall nearly led into turn one, but was 4 car links back after the back stretch. The ailing 14R was spinning its tires nearly everywhere at less than 25% throttle, and as a result lost 3rd to Knoxville Hall of Famer Danny Smith with 2 laps to go, but held onto 4th and still advanced to the 30 lap feature event.
The crew immediately went to work on the Bigg Golf 14R. A fast gear change and a few other adjustments before the A Main had the car back on the right track, and the driver would prove to be the same. While passing for 12th early in the 30 lap Main, the 49 car of Mallie Shuster came down off of the high side into turn 3 on a rubber down, one lane track and took all the air and momentum off of Rayhall, causing him to slide up the track and thus losing nearly 7 positions and sliding back down to around 20th once again. However, the last 10 laps would be an overtaking masterclass by Rayhall. Using the very top of the rubber down lane, Rayhall would make several swooping “round the outside” moves into turn 3, as well as an intense slider-swap-fest with the 20 of Jim Shuster for 12th that caused Shuster to stop by the SRM hauler to shake Rayhall’s hand and let the 14R camp know how much fun he had racing with them. On the final Green-White-Checkered restart, Rayhall found himself in 12th, staring at a USCS Feature Winner in Kyle Amerson ahead of him in 11th, and Landon Crawley in 10th. At the green, Rayhall sent the 14R up the inside of both Kyle and Landon and momentarily was in a top 10 spot, however Crawley would get a decent run off the middle and gain the 10th spot back down the backstretch while Rayhall and Amerson continued to duel until the finish, where all 3 cars finished 3 abreast, with Rayhall the odd man out in 12th. A fantastic run, and a huge step forward in Rayhall’s race-craft.
“It was a pretty solid weekend figuring out our new 360 along with the USCS series.” Rayhall said. “We saw track conditions we haven’t ever seen before and showed a lot of speed, just not at the right times to get a top 10 or better, which is where we probably should have been.”
Rayhall then announced the team would be skipping this weekend’s races in Summertown, TN.
“According to weather forecasts it looks like we will be taking this weekend off due to the rain predicted in Tennessee, but we are looking forward to getting back after it at Riverside in Arkansas on Halloween weekend! Huge thank you to all of our partners again for allowing us to have a winter schedule.”
Sean Rayhall Race Results
10/16 Chatham Speedway
Heat: S/1, F/4
Feature: S/13, F/13
10/17 Chatham Speedway
Heat: S/3, F/4
Feature: S/14, F/12
NEXT RACE:
October 30th/31st @ Riverside Int’l Raceway, West Memphis, AR
USCS 360 Sprints, LIVE on Floracing.
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