Deja Vu for Newlin and Mansberger Motorsports

A flat tire, Mother Nature, and an engine failure.  Those are the answers to a riddle nobody’s laughing at.

The question was, “What three things have made Zach Newlin 0-3 at Williams Grove Speedway since he scored a podium finish there on April 23rd?”.  Every racer goes through stretches like that.  The good news is, they can’t last forever.  Right?

Friday night, July 16th, Newlin and the Mansberger Motorsports team were among 22 HJ Towing and Recovery 358 sprint cars entered to compete in the Summer Series event at Williams Grove Speedway.  The team came ready with a new bullet under the hood, determined to return to running at the front of the field as they had done earlier in the season.

Three 8-lap heats were lined up using a random pill draw, which put Newlin in the 6th starting spot in the third heat.  All cars would qualify for the feature event, with the top four going to the redraw for the top twelve starting spots.

Newlin was good from the drop of the green in his heat race, quickly surging forward into a redraw spot, then methodically navigating his way toward the front.  Coming off turn four to take the white flag, just as Zach Daddy made his move into 2nd place, the monkey on the back of Newlin and the 21m team woke up again.  The motor suddenly let go in a big puff of smoke and the fluids poured out all over the Williams Grove clay as the car rolled to a stop at the turn one end of the front stretch.

0-4.

The 358 sprint cars will be back at “The Grove” on July 30th.  Newlin and Mansberger hope to be among them, but that will depend on how their motor situation unfolds in the coming week.

One thing is certain.  When they can eventually ditch that monkey, everyone is going to have to contend with the Newlin/Mansberger combination.