By J M Hallas
Edna, Tx.,(August 1st, 2009) The South Texas Modified Championship Series returned to Texana Raceway Park for it’s second series event. Several new drivers out of East Texas looked to be spoilers for the series regulars on the semi-banked 5/16 mile clay track in the fifth race of the series, though after a rain out at I-37 Raceway only four have been contested.

It looked to be a bad night for series points leader Danny Brown when he hurt the motor during hot laps. In a show of true sportsmanship, Steve Whiteaker jr. who was third in points only 9 out of the series lead stepped up and out of his car giving it to Brown.

“That’s what true sportsmanship is about,” said Brown.”I was done. We burned a piston or something in hot laps. Steve, who probably could have been able to win, told me to use his car. I really didn’t want to. If I win the championship I owe it all to him.”

“I figured since I’ve been doing good in USMTS that I’d give Danny the chance to win this series,” added Whiteaker. “It will be a trophy for our shop.”

White Does Daily Double Again

In what seems to be more the norm, than unusual, Paul White showed why he is one of the areas top drivers. White, who has been hotter than the Texas weather, pulled off yet another nightly sweep taking both the Modified and Limited Modified feature wins. Could we be looking at another Texana bounty hunt coming in the near future?

As green waved on the Modified 20-lap A-main, White beat Benny Perry into turn 1, but Perry stayed along side out of turn 2. White secured the lead on lap 1, while Lawrence Mikulencak and Josh Majek ran side by side for third. With White easing away from Perry, Brown was able to get by Jesse Manning for sixth. Mikulencak moved in to challenge Perry for second, as Tracy Denby got along side and by Majek for fourth.

Brown then moved in on Majek in the battle for fifth. Coming to the crossed flags it was White, Perry, Mikulencak, Denby and Brown running in the top five. Brown and Denby ran side by side for fourth, with Denby holding the spot. The top three were separated by a car length as they put some distance on Denby, Brown and Majek.

Brown again got along side Denby for fourth and made the pass stick on lap 14. With two to go, White had only three car lengths on Perry who had Mikulencak back a car length and Brown closing quickly. White, in the Bridwell Motorsports, Engines by Adan & Jeff, Dust Devil Chassis, held that margin to the checkers.

Brown’s fourth place finish added to his lead as, second in points, Dale Flanagan could only muster eighth. Mikulencak’s third place points should see him jump past both Manning and Majek to third, with Whiteaker only taking show up points.

“We have a pretty consistent car right now,” replied White “We’ve been coming here quite a bit. Really we try something new nearly every night. We have it narrowed down to where we know what we like.”

We’d like to think that we can read this track better as much as we come here. When the traveling cars show up here, they see so many tracks that don’t have to guess at that stuff. The have “store bought” cars that they can draw on for information. These cars are basically homemade cars. Jim(Chapman) built both of these cars and we can’t go to anyone”

“We have a nice base line that we go back to on the features. We make sure we’re at least as fast as we know we can be come feature time. In the heats or hot lapping we do try other stuff and a lot times we just have to go back to our same old reliable set up. So we’re not coming back with something different and getting faster, sometimes we get slower. But, we’re leaning something by it either way.”

“Keith and I don’t talk about bragging rights. We take the grandkids over the grandparents for dinner every Sunday evening and talk about how to make our cars go faster. I may or may not go run against him at the SportMod Nationals. With IMCA you have to buy a license and it’s not really worth it for one race. Bruce(Tesch) might have a big money race for us here that weekend, too.”

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