Team LaCross

The year in Numbers...

Number of points races - 15
Championship Points total - 776
Championship finishing position - 2nd

Main wins - 4
Trophy Dash Wins - 1
Heat wins - 6

Top 5  - 11
Top 10 - 15

Open Comp races - 3

Outlaw Compact 100 Lap Invitational, South Sound Speedway - 8th
WWRA Mini Stock Open Comp - Race 1 - 2nd
WWRA Mini Stock Open Comp - Race 2 - 1st

Not a bad season at all when you break it down like that.

Yup, last Friday the WWRA invited the mini stocks to come on out to the track and have an "open comp" race. All night, people were swapping cars and having one hell of a good time. The set up was this...

Heat race - on the 1/5th mile track... Kris won and Scott, on his first ever race on it, was 2nd in Tonya.

Main #1 - 40 laps on the 3/8ths... What an absolute barn burner this race was! There were over 15 cars that started the main and by lap 15 or so, the top 3 were Steve Green(former champion) in the 2 car, Scott(3 time champion) in the 99 and Kris(Current champion) in the 12. For the remainder of the race, those 3 ran nose to tail, lots of hard, clean racing that you would expect from that caliber of racers and thats how they finished. You could have tossed the proverbial blanket over the three of them, some of the funnest, most exciting racing of the year!

Main #2 saw the rematch between Scott and Steve. Kris asked Scott to drive the 12 car and Nat (another former champion) jumped into the 99 for this race. This time, it was Scott who was able to take the lead with Nat breathing down his neck for most of the race, with Steve fighting to stay within site of the leaders. With 3 laps to go, there was a caution which set the stage for a shoot-out. on the restart, Scott was the pole, with Nat on the outside and Steve inside row 2. Scott was able to get a little separation through 1 and 2 and left Nat and Steve to battle for 2nd, which was a very spirited battle indeed. In the end, Scott won, Nat was 2nd and Steve 3rd. Another cool trophy was awarded and is now residing on the surprise trophy shelf for 2009.

One more thing, as if It needed to be confirmed... Kris Harriss builds one HELL of a race car folks... If you are in the market for a Honda, our car is indeed still for sale, so don't delay!

Well, thats all she wrote, the 2009 race season is in the books. Here is how the last race went down. 

Race 15 - Damn Rain!

It was a decent start to the day, with overcast skies and the weatherman calling for clearing in the afternoon... Yeah Right... just as the late models were finishing thier 1st practice, the skies unleashed... for the next, oh... well, day? We scrapped first practice but decided that we needed to at least knock a little bit of the new off our tire, so went out for practice 2 and got a whole 120 degrees of heat into it... woowee, somebody grab me the sunscreen!

Our mission for the night was simple, win. As I stated in an earlier post, we needed to win the heat race and the main to have any chance of winning the championship. The rain was the wild card that had us worried the most. When the heat races came along, I was intently watching Heat #1, where Kris was racing and he finished 3rd. I relayed this info to Scott and he went out and finished 1st in the 2nd heat, a 2 point gain, knocking the gap down to 17 points.

There were 13 total cars that showed up, which was great for us, as we needed car count if we were to stand a chance. Unfortunately, when the main came along, 3 cars had chosen to sit it out (2 RWD cars and 1 with severe fogging issues on his windscreen). This ate up some of the cushion we were hoping for as this meant that with 10 cars starting, Kris would only have to finish in front of 2 cars to lock up the big trophy, no matter what we did.

When the main started, we were clearly the car to beat. Scott made his way quickly to 2nd then into 1st when the 1st caution came out for a car that had stalled on the front stretch. On the restart, Scott chose the outside and the 2nd place car was able to get a good start and lead for a few more laps while Scott just sat behind him, knowing that we could make the pass whenever he wanted, but smart enough to know that he would only make the move when the right opportunity presented itself. Shortly after we took the lead again, another yellow flew for a car spun in turn 4.

This brought about the most bizzare series of starts I've seen in a while. On the 1st restart, Scott got a great jump and the outside car pretty much stepped on his (well you know) and we were gone... until they waved it off and shook the black flag at us. 2nd restart, I advised Scott to bring them down slow and to not even breathe on the throttle until the "official" start line in turn 4, which he did and the outside car was once agian caught sleeping, but this time, he decided the best thing to do was turn into us and try to bring out the caution again. This caused damn near a 5 car pileup as he nearly took himself out and we skittered out to the lead again, alas to have it waved off.. again. By now I was pretty hot under the collar and looking for any official to vent on. Restart #3, they finally felt that it was a good start, but same result as before, by turn 1 we were clear of 2nd place by 3 car lengths.

Meanwhile, Kris was hanging out near the middle of the pack, taking his time and making sure that he was no lower than 8th place on the track. He later told me that with about 20 to go, he was able to see that only 8 cars were running and that was when he knew it was locked up and he could drive a little more aggressively. After 50 laps, we ended up winning by almost 5 seconds and Kris finished 3rd, resulting in a 13 point final difference and winning his 1st championship!

So there it is... Our miracle season has ended and it is time for reflection on what took place, what could have been and what was. In the next week, I'll be posting about our sponsors, car owner and team, so I'll save those thank you's for that post.

The Final Season points standings (top 12) for the 2009 Evergreen Speedway Foster Press Mini Stocks.

1 - Kris Harriss          789

2 - Scott LaCross      776  -13

3 tie - John Roberts        731  -58 (John "Fozzie" Roberts places 3rd via 1st Tie breaker, 2 wins to 1 for Mikey) 

4 tie - Mike Fritz            731  -58

5 - Nat Barber           613  -176

6 - Travis Woodward  588  -201

7 - Kenny Schukar    383  -406

8 - Kim Lang             342  -447

9 - Andrew Schukar   315  -474

10 - John Schukar       298  -491

11 - Bob Emery          289  -500

12 - Jeff Miller             235  -554

Congratulations to Kris Harriss for his 1st championship! You deserved it my friend!!!

This is the point where I would normaly say, "see you at the races!" but the season is over. But don't fret... Stay tuned right here to keep up with the goings on over the winter as we plan for next season and a hopeful triumphant return to the Super Late Models!

Posted at 12:01 am by Scott Whitmore

The youngster or the champ?

One title will be decided on the track on Saturday, Evergreen Speedway's Mini-Stock division championship.

Entering the season championship race, former rookie of the year Kris Harriss holds a 19-point lead over three-time champion Scott LaCross. No. 3 Jon Roberts is mathematically alive at 47 points back, but would need both of the drivers in front of him to have catastrophic nights to lift the division trophy.

Although LaCross has three feature wins this season to Harriss' one, both have risen to the top of the standings by consistently finishing near the front of the field each week.

Regardless of which driver prevails on Saturday, one person who should be able to celebrate is Mindy Harriss, the wife of Kris Harriss and the owner of the car driven by LaCross.

Visit Scott Whitmore's blog at http://www.heraldnet.com/section/BLOG25

Yea, I know, I've been slacking... but lots has happened since we last talked, so let me bring you up to date... no, that might take too long, let me sum up!

Week 13 - 1st weekend of the Fair. We figured out a little something tonight that we feel was a major contributor to our poor performance in week 12. A minor thing that we had assumed was insignificant was in fact, HUGELY significant. I'd love to tell you what it was, but we still have a race to go and a championship to chase, so that will have to be my secret until the season is over. We went out and finished 2nd in our heat race, behind Kris, who now had what seemed like an insurmountable lead, but in the main, Scott once again showed why he is one of the best by going out and winning the race by an easy margin of just a shade under 4 tenths of a second. It was a good race and we felt great, coming back from such a poor showing the week before to grab the win. Unfortunately for our championship aspirations, Kris finished 2nd, so we only were able to muster a 1 point gain for the night.

Week 14 - week 2 of the Fair, 2nd rain race of the season. Eyup, thats right. It was nice all day long and we once again finished 2nd in our heat race and Kris finished 1st in his. We made a pretty significant call in regards to our mystery change from the week before by going even further with it for the main. Then, the rains came. Not a deluge, but enough to make the track nice and slick, LaCrash jumped out to an early, large lead, driving it in slow and easy on the bottom while most others were fighting to keep control. Most others, except for Fozzy, who was going like a wild man on the high side in his RWD RX-7. As I counted the laps off, I let Scott know that Fozzy was coming fast and rim riding the track, but our car just would not handle up there and eventually, Fozzy caught and passed us for the lead. With 5 to go, Scott began reeling Fozzy back in and a couple of times it looked like he might get the lead back, but Foz held tough and the track was still just wet enough to not allow a good run on the bottom, so we ended up 2nd with Kris in 3rd. To be honest, we were pretty happy to be putting a straight racecar back in the trailer and 2nd was a good finish!

Here are the championship standings going into the final week of the season, this Saturday.

Kris Harriss -                737

Scott LaCross -            718

John "Fozzy" Roberts - 690 

Michael Fritz -              681

Nat Barber -                 613

Travis Woodward -        548

Kenny Shuckar -          383

Andrew Shuckar -        315

Kim Lang -                  308

John Shuckar -            243

Bob Emery -               239

Jeff Miller -                  235

Well, this is it. Race 15 is upon us and another season is just about in the books. We are 19 points back. Mathematically still in it. We are going to show up and we are going to do what we need to do, which is win our heat race and the main. The rest is up to fate... come out this weekend and show your support. You arent going to want to be the only person who wasnt there the night that we came back from a double digit deficit to put an exclaimation point on a suprise Mini Stock season! But even if that doesnt happen, you'll want to be there help us celebrate the first of what we here at Team LaCross feel will be many championships for our car owner, Kris Harriss. It's going to be a hell of a fun night Saturday, no matter how it turns out. Come on down after the races, we will be pitted near the entrance of turn 3 on the 5/8's track!

See you at the races!!   

Well, we are two weeks into our 4 week run and with 3 races left, we find ourselves now tied for 2nd in points and 21 points out of 1st place. This is how it happened...

Week 11, we finished 1st in the heat race to stay 10 points back of Kris, but in the main, Kris had hit the mythical set up and with the help of some good tire strategy was able to win the race with us finishing 3rd. The car felt a little off, but even had we hit the mark dead on, I think that 2nd was the best we would do that night. This dropped us back to 14 points back, but we were able to extend our gap back to 3rd to 4 points.

Week 12, Finishing 3rd in the heat race behind Nat and Kris opened the gap to 15 points to first and closed our lead over 3rd to 2 points. All day, the car felt a little loose and we kept putting wedge in, adjusting camber and stagger in an effort to make it better. When the main came, Scott made a few aggressive moves to try to get to the front of the pack from our starting spot, but the car kept getting looser and eventually we settled into 5th place. In the mean time, Fozzy had put on 3 fresh tires and ran up to the front with Kris and Nat in tow. At the finish Fozzy won his very first main event (WooHoo Fozzy!!!) and did some really kick ass donuts to celebrate the victory. Kris finished 2nd and Nat 4th, with Mikey between them in 3rd. The end result of the night was fairly disappointing for us as we are going to have to pull some rabbits out of the hat to get back to within striking distance of the championship with only 3 races remaining in the season. I have confidence that if anyone can do it, we can!

The only good thing about the night was that our class sponsor, Foster Press, gave away 2 tires, 1 to the winner and 1 to a random finisher and as luck (or bad luck) would have it, we were the recipients of the random tire, so at least we got free fresh rubber to put on the car this week!

Ok everyone, it is Fair time for the next two weeks!!! 20 bucks gets you a race/fair combo ticket, so there isnt a better time of the year to come on out to the races. Come out early, enjoy the fair and then see the races that evening. This weekend we have twin 50 lap Super Late Model races, Street Stocks, Mini Stocks and the Super Figure 8 Nationals, which is a 1 hour figure 8 race that always brings out a good field of cars.

Stop by and visit with us during the autograph session this weekend but make sure you get there early as we have a limited number of special Team LaCross items to go along with a signed autograph card of your favorite driver that you are sure to want. They are going to go fast so dont dawdle!

See you at the races!

Well how bout that... Racing resumes this Saturday for Team LaCross with the final 5 races of the year coming over the next 6 weeks, including a 4 week run that begins this weekend and which includes 2 race dates during the Evergreen State fair! WooHoo! Corn on the cob, barbecue Beef sandwiches and Purple cows.

It's been uneventful around the shop lately. Tonya is ready to race, we have been doing a little set up work for a few people and pretty much taking it easy. But that all changes this weekend. With 4 in a row, every lap counts even more. One mistake at this point in the season could end a championship run, but you also have to keep in mind that every position is worth valuable points, so you really have to walk a fine line between not aggressive enough and so aggressive that you break the car.

Now is when all the hard work we have put in starts to pay off, but it's also the time to work even harder, put in more hours at the shop, become even MORE "anal" than we usually are. We owe it to our Sponsors, our Car Owners, our Fans and of course, ourselves to go out there and perform at the highest level we know how, which as you know is 110% each and every time.

The points as they stand today, August 13th, 2008.

Pos. #    Driver Name        Pts   Pts Bhd

Dont forget, this weekend is a full night of Racing with the Super Late Models, Street Stocks and Mini Stocks on the 3/8's, Super Figure 8's on the F8, Hornets and Youth Hornets. Come on out and enjoy a lazy summer evening watching some great racing action at Evergreen Speeway.

See you at the track!

Back in the days of old, the mini stock class had a trophy dash for the 4 fast qualifiers or the top finisher in each of the heat races. Points were actually awarded for these dashes and this made for some very spirited 4 lap shootouts. If you had a perfect night, you scored 62 points. 8 for a heat race win, 4 for the dash win and 50 for the main win.

Well, those days have come and gone and the most you can now score in a night is 58. However, occasionally something cool goes down to award the class a dash and allows us all to go for that mythical perfect night, the Hat Trick if you will, and Saturday was just such a night.

One of our Sponsors, Harrissteam.com, put up 200 dollars for a Mini Stock "dash for the cash." Now, as many of you know, when cold hard dollars are on the line, we show up with guns blazing!

The car was ok in practice, we made a few minor stagger and camber adjustments each session and by the time heat races rolled around, we were pretty confident we had a decent set up. LaCrash started on the inside of row 3 of the 7 car heat race and by the end of the backstretch on the green flag lap, he was making his move to take the lead, completing the pass in turn 4. he then ran out to a 6-8 car length lead and finished with the win, Kris Harriss 2nd and Mike Fritz in 3rd in what turned out to be the battle to watch in that heat race with Kris crossing the line about a bumper width ahead of Mike.

Heat race Video courtesy of Mike Fritz - http://evergreenministock.multiply.com/video/item/18

In the Dash, it was lined up with the 2nd place cars from each heat on the front row and the winners of each heat on the back row. This put Kris Harriss on the pole, Kim Lang outside, Us inside of the back row and Nat Barber on the outside. Every one of those cars more than capable of walking off with the prize. Upon taking the green, LaCrash knew he had to make a move and make it fast, so he dove under Kris in turn one and was able to complete the pass for the lead coming out of turn 2, the battle was fast and furious for those 4 laps with LaCrash the winner, Kris 2nd, Nat 3rd and Kim 4th. It felt awesome not only winning the cash, but more inportantly, the Trophy, becuase as you know... its all about the hardware!

Sorry, no video of the dash was available at press time!

The Main rolled around and we started 7th, the inside of row 4, we were surrounded by the top 5 in points, with Nat and Kris behind us due to the invert (at our speedway, the top three finishers are required to start at the back of the main. they do put rookies, drivers with no point average and anyone that just wants to start towards the back behind them however) and Mike and Fozzie were directly in front of us. Quite a gauntlet of really fast cars to be around. At the drop of the green, it was on baby... The inside row moved up and by turn 3, LaCrash found himself in 4th place behind the cars of Jeff Miller(30), Kim(33) & Fozzie(64) with Nat(97) and Kris(12) hot on his heels. This went on until the exit of turn 4 on lap 3 when LaCrash decided it was time to go... he stuck Tonya in the dirt coming out and made it 3 wide down the front stretch and into turn 1, the leader washed up just a little and Scott was on rails as he passed all three cars in turn 1! It was a thing of beauty to be sure.

Nat eventually made it around Fozzy a lap or two later and I thought for sure there was going to be a battle for the lead, but we were on a mission and would not be denied... As Scott stretched it out to over a full straightaway the battle for 2nd thru 4th go interesting with Mike(2) passing Fozzy for 3rd on the last lap and giving Nat a serious run for 2nd!

Main event Video courtesy of Mike Fritz - http://evergreenministock.multiply.com/video/item/19 

When it was all said and done, we walked away with 2 trophies, 335 bucks in winnings and another feature winner sticker for Mindy to put on the car. It was a "62" and those kind of nights dont happen every time you hit the track, so we are still pretty jacked about it here at Team LaCross central. But as excited as we are about last week's results, there is another goal looming... we are now in 2nd place in the points, 10 points out of 1st with 5 races to go. Kris is in the top spot and Nat is just behind us in 3rd... 11 points seperating the top 3, with Fozzy and Mike only 25 points behind that. I have a feeling its going to come down to the final race on Championship night. 

Can we win championship #4??? You'll have to stay tuned to find out. Come on out to our next Evergreen race on August 15th and cheer us on, or hey, if you feel like a little drive, why not come down to South Sound Speedway in Tenino, Wa. this weekend, where Team LaCross will be invading the ranks of the Outlaw compact series to run in the 100 lap, 1500.00 to win, Outlaw invitational.

You can find directions and pricing info at www.southsoundspeedway.com you'll know you're there when you see the #99 orange and white Harrissteam.com, Flowmaster Gutter, All City Haul-N, Speedway Carstar Honda Prelude on the front page!

See you at the races!!! 

Ok, so I am a week behind on my race report for 7/11. But, it was an odd night anyways, so why not make the post off kilter too, right?

It all started early in the week when we were working late every night on some pretty major changes we made to the car. This culminated in a leave the shop to go get some sleep at 5am friday night. Needless to say, we were all a little on edge from lack of sleep at the track.

We only got a single 10 minute practice... A lot of major changes to the car were made, so we were understandably upset about this. 10 minutes to dial the car in, scrub a new tire and work on the race set up.Yeah, right...

Heat Race: Uneventful until Scott was going for the lead... Another car spun bringing out the yellow and as he slowed up, he and the car he was battling for 1st somehow got hooked up and we got a cut tire. Purely a racing deal from what I could see, no malice or intent, just good hard racing and sometimes, things like that happen. Fortunately, they dont count yellow laps and he was able to come in for a tire change and get back out before the green flew again. Starting from the back, he was able to make it back up to 3rd in the remaining laps.

Main: Ok, so after spending a large amount of time fixing the car after the Heat race, we were beign rushed by the officials to get lined up for the main. In my hurry, I spilled about a gallon of fuel in the trunk. I let Scott know to wiggle the car around to get it out on the way to line up. As the Green dropped, I could see fule spilling out of the car for about 3 laps. The caution came out for a car conking out and they pulled us to the infield to check and make sure there wasnt a serious leak then gave us our spot back in line. Scott had started in the back and was picking his way through the field, dodging accidents all along the way. The 2nd to last restart was a good one, with Scott taking the low line at the cone after the leader also went low and 2nd went high. At the green, Scott was able to get a nose under the leader going into 1 when they threw the caution again for what we all assume was a bad start, although Im not sure why as the first two rows were in perfect alignment... but I digress...

The 2nd shot at a restart didnt go quite as well and Scott was left in a dogfight for 2nd. In the end, he finished a disappointing 3rd.

Since the next race has already happened since this post, I'll just go on ahead and start another one explaining it!

I saw this action photo posted on Mindy's facebook page today and immediately it struck me as familiar...

Racetrack dogs

Now, if you are movie guy like me, you've got to be thinking to yourself, "Is that K-Billy's super sounds of the 70's playing the background?" Here is the movie shot that this picture reminds me of...

Reservoir_Dogs

Kind of funny, eh?