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03 May 2008 Roseville, Ca. After the previous race weekend's incident with a seizing motor, luck definitely turned for the better for Laura and her crew. In previous races, Laura had been running a compression engine and the rules state 150 pounds must be added with this motor package; this proved to be a significant disadvantage. The crew of Golden State Racing worked hard to get a new crate engine in the car as well as some other changes to the chassis so Laura could get an opportunity to get a feel of the new package in a Thursday test session. The test was very successful with the chassis feeling night and day better and Laura turned her fastest lap by more than three tenths of a second. Laura and GSR were very happy with the test session and all looked forward to a promising race weekend.
The May 3rd race was the season's first 100-lapper as well as Laura's first in a stock car. Before, Hayes could barely crack the top ten in practice sessions and this weekend started off significantly better when she ran top five times. Qualifying was another improvement as the #22 Peoplefinders.com/GoneRacin.com Chevrolet topped the field until the final car took over the top spot, beating Laura's time by a few hundredths. Second fast time was still a huge accomplishment for the team in comparison to prior races.
With the four car invert, Laura would start in the 3rd position. At the drop of the green flag, she quickly moved up to 2nd position. Because this race was 100 laps, mostly everyone had similar plans of conserving equipment until the end of the race. Everyone settled in to line, with Laura closely trailing the leader for the first 39 laps. Restarts were a challenge for Hayes because the car would tighten up a lot before the tires cleaned off an reached the optimum pressures. On a mid-race restart, two cars were able to take advantage of this and Hayes dropped back to 4th. Once again, the drivers settled back in to line until lap 75 when everyone started to put everything on the line for the win. The 22 car was recognizably one of the fastest on the track and Laura was on the move. The 2nd and 3rd place cars began to race one another and Laura looked to the inside when the 3rd place driver checked up in turns three and four. Racing room quickly shrank and both cars were leaning on each other in turn one. Exiting turn two, the outside driver drifted back up the track and as soon as this happened the #22 car lost its nose and shot up the back straightaway, stalling backwards on the track, facing traffic. Everyone missed Laura until one of the last place cars hit her head on and others piled up behind them. Laura had significant damage to her car and had to enter the pits for repairs. The crew did what they could to mend the wounds but with the damage and having to start dead last of the shrinking 22 car field, would make it difficult for Hayes to gain many positions. But she proved many wrong and was able pass over ten cars in a matter of laps, getting back up to 8th spot by the checkered flag.
After qualifying 2nd and running in the top five for three-fourths of the race, 8th place was a little bit of a disappointment, however, this was a significant improvement! Laura gained a tremendous amount of experience both running up front with the best and weaving her way through traffic. Laura received many compliments and impressed a number of people with her performance. Every race has been an improvement, next race should be better!
Special thanks goes out to car owner Al Vautier for his tremendous help getting Laura back on track with the crate engine. Frank Jordan, Eric Snyder and the rest of the GSR crew for their hard work in preparing the car in a matter of a day and making it FAST! And definitely thanks to the crew (Dad, Uncle Dennis, Jay and Big Dave) for their efforts at the track.
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