Open All Night

The team made its debut outing for 2008 last weekend at Utica-Rome Speedway in Vernon, NY. The team enjoyed the facility there last year as the track is interesting (and groomed well), and there is more than enough space in the pits. Oh yeah, and it is a mere 15 minutes from home base in Rome. We don’t even have to get on a highway to get there! There are three races scheduled there this year, and we plan to hit all three. That should make it the most frequented locale on the calendar.
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The mates from halfbakedschemes.com racing are at it again for 2008. The team plans to take on a similar schedule as 2007, while again traversing some of the most historic dirt tracks in upstate NY. The team will campaign the same Modified Lite as used last year and continue running with the Empire State Dwarf Car Association (ESDCA).
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As promised yesterday, here is the first installment of Michael’s Rental Review. The car itself was a 2007 Nissan Altima. I was surprised to see that they even had Nissans (don’t ever recollect having that option before), and was also surprised when it came with 26k miles already. Back a few years ago, before OEM’s wised up and stopped filling the fleet market, cars were always returned before 25k miles (and maybe sooner). I rarely ever had one with more than 15!
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2007 rolled around with a unique challenge: There was a second black car in the driveway adorned with Cg-Lock livery, but the similarities between the cars were few. The new Cg-Lock ride was for a foreign racing surface with foreign technologies, and the season would begin with nearly a complete dearth of usable information. We decided to have fun and become moderately acclimated without getting bogged down in the details. Before the season began, we elected to run with the ESDCA, which is the Empire State Dwarf Car Association. The schedule consisted of 30+ races at 7 tracks clustered around Syracuse, NY. The schedule was published in February, which gave us plenty of time to ruminate prior to the season. We wanted to wait a few weeks into the season to debut; however the debut was pushed back even further as we had a wee bit more car maintenance to complete than we anticipated. It took us until June, but we finally headed north towards the Canadian border to begin the season.
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Due to my devastatingly poor time management skills, the Front Page has been awash in inactivity. While I hope to fix this with an abundance of new (and quite old) information over the holiday season, I would like to invite everyone to drop in on the michael’s musings section in the mean time. Michael is as irritated as ever and has had quite a few gears to grind during this off season.

Half-Baked Schemes Racing is about to embark on a weekend that will separate the men from the boys. Check inside for the itinerary…

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The Number 41 CG-Lock Mod-Lite had it’s first double-dip of the 2007 season, running Friday at Brewerton Speedway and Saturday at Fulton Speedway. The team experienced a number of other firsts, over the weekend, also, culminating in Michael Occhipinti’s first Top Ten finish in a feature.

Other firsts included the Team’s first start(s) from the front row, the first visit from racing widow Lindsay (and racing Mom Darlene) and the first (and second) slight alterations to the chassis. Pics inside!
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