Bad News for CCS - Good News for DJ Kennington - Good News for CCS

DJ Kennington will not be making an appearance at CCS next week. DJ has been offered a Nationwide Series car for the next race at Montreal on August 20th. He has to go down to Montreal early to get his car fitted for him and that just happens to be on Wednesday.

Local Nascar Canadian Tire Series driver Dave Connelly has agreed to come down and bring one of his cars down to have on display. Dave Connelly had a great finish last week and won the Coca-Cola Move of the Race Award.

August 7^th, 2011 – The Schneiders/Metro Nascar Team competed at the Grand Prix du Trois-Rivieres last weekend for their 4^th start in the 2011 Nascar Canadian Tire Series. Charging from the back over top of a rain soaked track driver Dave Connelly passed 19 cars to score the teams first Top 10 of the year and winning the Coca-Cola Move of the Race Award - the race was aired on both TSN and RDS networks.

The team arrived at one of the most popular races of the series in the small town of Trois-Rivieres – during practice the team was 20^th quick and swapped a gear for qualifying hoping to find some speed on the tight 10 turn road course. Unfortunately the gear swap didn’t help and they qualified 28^th spot of the 33 cars in the field. The team opted to switch to another gear and start scratch on the field for the race on Sunday – with a threat of rain all the teams set the cars up to race in the rain including installing windshield wipers and windshield blowers on the cars.

One hour before the scheduled start of the race the skies opened up and drenched the track – it would definitely be a wet race. 

As the field came to the green Dave dropped to the tail of the field as per the rulebook and Dave took the green charging hard passing 5 cars on the first two laps, by lap 9 Dave had moved from the rear of the field and was running in the 18^th spot.

“It was insane” laughed Dave. “My wiper stopped working on lap 2, but the fogging of the windshields was the issue – you need hot dry air to clear the moisture and it’s impossible to do in a racecar in the rain, I had a spot straight in front of me the size of a grapefruit that I could see out the front so I was looking out the side windows for reference points to turn left and right.”

Dave continued to charge hard with an epic battle with the #60 MOPAR Dodge of Ron Beauchamp Jr. for 10^th spot towards the end of the race. Dave slipped by Ron with 5 laps to go and scored the teams first top 10 of the year.

“It feels fantastic – it was a crazy race – you could barely see anything, all the right handers I was completely blind – but the car was working really well all things considered” stated Dave. “We beat some really great drivers and teams today, it feels like we are gaining some momentum now and learning these cars”.

The teams next event is in two weeks at the Napa 100 in Montreal on Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. This event will be covered live on TSN and RDS stations.