Tag Archive for: #swiftsprings

In recent weeks, performance has been trending the right direction for Austin Berry Racing.  The Berry’s Siding & Seamless Gutter, Locust Hill Custom Butcher Shop, Addicted2DirtPR.com, Nathan Berry Beef Farm, A&C Racing Engines, Ontime Body & Graphic, Swift Springs, Hoosier Tire Mid-Atlantic, VP Racing Fuels, Rocket Chassis XR1 No.86 has responded to recent changes.  For Austin, the feel he was looking for was almost entirely back and consistency finally existed again.  All the team wanted out of their April 9th/10th double-header weekend with the United Late Model Series (ULMS) was to continue that trend.  

During the week, the team investigated the engine miss that had arisen in the closing laps of the race at Port Royal Speedway on April 3rd.  Fortunately nothing serious was uncovered.  It appeared the ignition coil was going bad, so as part of necessary maintenance and to ensure they covered all bases, they replaced the coil, spark plugs, fuel pressure regulator and fuel filter, any of which could have resulted in similar symptoms.  A test fire of the engine proved the issue was resolved and they could turn their focus to preparing for the double-header weekend ahead.

Friday night at Williams Grove Speedway in Mechanicsburg, PA they never got the chance to continue their recent momentum and improve on the 11th place finish Austin had recorded a few weeks prior on his first trip to the legendary oval.  The day had a promising afternoon and evening forecast, but a persistent mist developed in the late afternoon, which led to the cancellation of the event around 6pm, less than an hour before hot laps were scheduled to occur.  

Twenty four hours later the team was one of twenty three ULMS teams unloaded at Selinsgrove Speedway in Selinsgrove, PA.  Austin was the 11th car to go under the clock for qualifying.  He recorded the 15th quickest time in the field, which placed him in the 5th starting spot in heat number three.  After one competitor was unable to make the call for the third heat, Berry was able to take the green from the 4th spot.  Despite experiencing an issue with the right front of the car bottoming out, he was able to finish 3rd in the heat race.  The issue with bottoming out was something that had surfaced the previous week but the team had made adjustments they believed would resolve the issue.

The team huddled to plan for the 30-lap feature, in which Austin would roll off 9th.  Their expectation was that the track would dry out a little, so they made their tire choice and adjustments accordingly, along with further adjustments to address the bottoming issue.

“By the time we completed our pace laps before the green flag for the feature, I was pretty sure we had made the wrong tire choice.“, shared Austin Berry from the team’s shop the following morning.  “The track had held more moisture throughout the show than we expected.  At that point, I was just hoping once we got enough heat in the tires, they would start working.” 

Berry’s concern was realized when the green flag dropped and he slipped back four spots during the first two laps of the event..  His tires just weren’t ‘hooking up’ and it was costing him.  By lap 4 the tires had heated up and kicked in.  His lap times reflected the difference and Austin started to recover and run down the cars that had gotten by at the start.  He got back by one competitor and was battling a couple more when the caution lights flashed on with 11 laps complete.  

The ULMS uses what is known as the “Delaware Double File” lineup on restarts.  This means the leader is out front all alone, while the remainder of the field lines up double-file behind the leader.  The ensuing restart, which found Austin lined up in 12th, on the inside of row 7 didn’t play out well.  Wanting to capitalize on the restart, Berry was glued to the back of the car in front of him, Ken Trevitz, as the field headed into turn one.  Unfortunately, a car on the outside just in front of Berry, turned down and made contact with Trevitz, leading to a chain reaction.  Fortunately, thanks to quick thinking, Berry was able to spin his car and avoid contact, sliding sideways to a stop next to Trevitz.  Unfortunately, one of the cars behind Austin didn’t manage the same accomplishment and instead made heavy contact with the left front of Berry’s car, then rotated and contacted the left rear of his No.86 as well.  

The incident would end the night for ABR.  It didn’t take long to determine the damage was pretty extensive.  The front clip of Berry’s Rocket XR1 chassis was bent.  This was definitely going to mean a step backward from all the progress the team had been making, not only in terms of tonight’s result but also in terms of their finances.  This would definitely put a dent in the budget.  Replacing the bent front clip is expensive and will require tearing down the car, pulling the motor, and taking a trip to Rocket Racing in West Virginia.

Looking back on the incident, Berry shared, “I’m certainly not happy about it, but these things happen.  It’s part of racing.  I really thought the car behind us could have missed hitting us, but it’s behind us now and we have to focus on the work we have to do to get back to the track.”  Austin continued, “It’s really frustrating because the tires had just come in and I know we could have driven back into the top 10 in the remaining 19 laps.”  

The competition is so close, every decision made by the teams can be critical.  Would Austin have been ahead of the accident had they made a different tire choice?  Maybe.  Would he have been better off than the competition late in the race with the tire compound he chose?  Maybe.  None of us will ever know.  That’s just one of the things that makes this sport so challenging.  It also makes it rewarding when you get it right.

ABR was already planning to take the next couple weekends off, but now there will be a lot of unplanned work and expense during those off weeks.  The goal is to be ready to head to Bedford Speedway on Friday, April 30th for the $8,500 to win, ULMS sanctioned, Billy Winn 85th Anniversary Classic, but that could be challenging.  Stay tuned to all the social media outlets below for updates from ABR.

Austin Berry was excited to get to the track on Friday, March 26th.  He had good reason to be.  During maintenance and prep at the shop during the week, the team had finally discovered the source of a mysterious issue they had been having with their right front shock for several races.  On top of that, after a couple years of losing the opportunity to Mother Nature, he was finally going to get to make his first start at the legendary Williams Grove Speedway in Mechanicsburg, PA.  

Friday’s show at the ‘paper-clip’ shaped oval was sanctioned by the ULMS and 22 teams signed in to compete.  The Grove is known as a tricky track for even the most experienced wheelmen, so the 3 circuits Berry was able to make in his lone hot la session certainly didn’t provide all the answers he needed prior to his timed qualifying effort.  Going out 7th, he ended up recording the 19th quickest time on a very heavy and slightly greasy surface.  Having never made laps there before, it was difficult to judge whether the resolved shock issue had made much of a difference.  Saturday night would probably be a better time to evaluate that.

The timed qualifying determined the lineups for three 8-lap heats.  Given the number of cars registered, all cars would qualify for and start ‘straight up’ in the main event, meaning the heat winners start in the top 3 spots in the feature, followed by the second place qualifiers, and so on.  Austin started 7th in the first heat and was able to move forward.  Each lap was valuable experience.  He fended off repeated challenges from Billy Wampler and held on to finish 5th.  

The heat race effort provided Berry with the 13th starting spot in the 30-lap A-main.  The first 14 laps went smoothly before the first caution of the event appeared.  At the caution, Austin was still riding in the 13th position, working to figure out the best way to get around the speedway.  The track was still full of grip and the leaders had set a blistering pace, but Berry was able to hang with the quick pace and was still on the lead lap.  On the restart, he made some good choices and was able to start moving forward, finding himself in 11th on lap 19.  He challenged briefly for 10th but had to settle back into line.  Austin found a rhythm and brought the Berry’s Siding & Seamless Gutter, Locust Hill Custom Butcher Shop, Addicted2DirtPR.com, Nathan Berry Beef Farm, A&C Racing Engines, Ontime Body & Graphic, Swift Springs, Hoosier Tire Mid-Atlantic, VP Racing Fuels, Rocket Chassis XR1 No.86 home in 11th place, still on the lead lap.  A very solid outing for his first visit to Williams Grove.

The following night brought another stout field of 36 super late models to Port Royal Speedway for a weekly pill-draw show.  For these ‘regular shows’, a random pill draw is used in lieu of timed qualifying to set the heat lineups.  The format would be 4 8-lap heats with 5 cars from each to qualify for the A-main.  The top 3 drivers would go to the redraw, a random drawing for the top 12 starting spots in the A-main.  

Austin started the evening a little behind the figurative eight ball, starting 9th in heat number four.  The heat race provided the first true feedback on the resolved shock issue, as Austin found himself in a good handling racecar and was able to quickly advance to 7th in under 2 laps.  A slight error in judgement put him over the cushion in turn 4, slipping back to 9th as lap 2 went in the books.   He regained his rhythm and fought back into 7th just past the halfway point and began to close on the 6th place car.  Berry ran out of laps and settled for a 6th place finish.  After crawling out of the car, Berry shook his head and reflected on a missed opportunity, “We were really good (in the heat).  If I had not slipped above the cushion on lap 2, I’m pretty certain we would have transferred to the feature.” 

He didn’t have time to dwell on it.  Austin was slated to start 8th in the 12-lap B-main.  The top 4 finishers from the event would transfer to fill the final starting spots for the A-main.  The team made some minor adjustments on their Rocket Chassis XR1 and rolled into staging for the final opportunity to transfer.  Berry once again had a car that responded to his liking, enabling him to move quickly into 7th on the opening lap and into 6th on lap two.  When the caution flag waved on lap 5 for third place running Gene Knaub, Austin had just powered into 5th, one away from a transfer spot.  The restart put Berry into the 4th and final transfer position.  

The field returned to green and Berry continued making smooth laps, finding himself on the heels of the 3rd place car as lap 7 went in the books.  As Austin navigated turn 4, he got a little higher than he had been running and brushed the spoiler on the fence.  It seemed pretty minor…until it tapped the fence again, slighter harder this time, as he exited turn 4.  That impact was enough to upset the balance of the car and shift the weight from the right rear to the left rear, leaving Berry fighting the wheel trying to regain the balance and keep it pointed toward turn 1.  Unfortunately his efforts were unsuccessful and he was left with two choices:  keep fighting it and clobber the outside wall or spin it out and avoid destroying the car.  He chose option two and ended his day facing traffic watching the field sail by.  The team was credited with a 13th place finish.

Given the struggles ABR has had in the early part of the 2021 season, you would have expected to find a very frustrated and angry ABR pit area after the B-main.  Maybe a wrench bouncing off a distant trailer wall?  Surprisingly, you would be wrong.  Well, half wrong anyway.  Austin Berry was actually smiling.  When asked about the grin, he responded, “Oh, don’t get me wrong.  I’m mad.”  Actually he may have used a different word than mad.  He was definitely upset.  So was the rest of the crew.  

The grin boiled down to this:  the good news of the week outweighed the disappointment of the past 30 minutes, and even the season for that matter.  The entire team realized the car finally had speed again.  The issue they found during the week, coupled with some other adjustments to the car, and also to Austin’s driving style, had made a significant difference.  They had finally crested the hill after searching and searching for the change(s) they needed to get back to where they had been in 2019.  Everyone at ABR understands the big picture.  They understand this sport is not easy.  It takes time and hard work to reach the goal, and there’s still plenty of work to be done.  They aren’t all the way to where they need to be yet, but now they can move forward, figuratively and literally.

After debriefing with the team, Berry was ready to chat and without being asked a question, he got right to it regarding the crash that took him out of a transfer spot.  “Well, I stepped on it.“, he said with a laugh.  “That one is all on me.  I learned a lesson that hard way there.“, he shrugged.  He explained that he had actually slowed entering turn 3 more than he had been, with a plan to turn down across turn 4 to get a run off the bottom and take a shot at third place.  When he got back on the throttle, it shoved the nose up the track and got him over the cushion, ultimately leading to the crash.  Wisdom says, take the transfer spot and move on.  Lesson learned the hard way.  

Asked for his final thought on the day, without hesitation Berry said, “I can’t wait to get back here next Saturday.”  I can understand why.  I think Austin Berry Racing is about to make folks take notice.  

ABR’s only race of the coming Easter weekend will be at Port Royal Speedway on Saturday, April 3rd.  It will be Camera and Autograph night at Port Royal Speedway, which means the pits will be open early so all fans can visit the pit area and get up close with the cars and teams.  Gates open at 3pm.  Please stop by, say hello to Austin and pick up a shirt or hoodie!  We have some sizes still available of our 2020 apparel and from the Racing For Time Pancreatic Cancer campaign car as well.  We will have the Berry’s Siding & Seamless Gutter, Locust Hill Custom Butcher Shop, Addicted2DirtPR.com, Nathan Berry Beef Farm, A&C Racing Engines, Ontime Body & Graphic, Swift Springs, Hoosier Tire Mid-Atlantic, VP Racing Fuels, Rocket Chassis XR1 No.86 ready to tackle the Speed Palace!