The year started out on a pretty good note. I figured that we could be at least a top 15-20 car right out of the box, assuming that I could actually drive the car! The first two races were just that, a 13th and 15th place finish in the A mains. Then the third week was up and down. A best finish of 8th and my first heat race win showed that we were heading in the right direction in a hurry. Then the situation with my co-owner, Michael Murphy, deciding he was done racing already and pulled his motor out of the car with no explanation as to why. Even to this day I have never been given a reason for his sudden departure.

Anyway, that left Jerry and I with the task of scrambling to find a new motor to put together with next to no money. It took us 4 weeks to put all the missing pieces back together only to have the motor burn the bearings in the first race back. Another week off and then try it again only to face the same problem. Finally after 7 weeks of frustration, we held it together and got in as many races as we could for the remainder of the year. This even included a sponsor paid race at the famed "Home of the Professionals", Huset's Speedway. Thanks, Green Clean!

In summary for the year as far as on track performance goes, if we could have stayed in there for all the races and not had our personal and mechanical problems for half the season, we could have been right there in the hunt for the championship at the end of the year. If you take a look at the points, we made 10 of 20 races at I-90 Speedway. We finished the year with an even 1000 points. If you go ahead and double those points that gives us 2000 for 20 races Assuming that we could keep that points average going all year, we would have ended up in 3rd place, only 10 points from the championship! Another way to look at the numbers to make us look good is that, if you take all the driver's points from just the nights that we ran and took the nightly points average, that put us in about 6th place in points. I realize that if we had gotten in all 20 races, any number of things could have happened to drastically change things, but I am looking at the positives right now. One last thing I would like to point out, every night that the car was still running at the end of the night, we never failed to make the A feature! Even on the last night when the engine blew into hundreds of pieces, I was leading the B feature with a lap and a half to go setting us up for another A feature race.

As of right now, November 3rd, Jerry and I are forming our game plan for next year. We know what we need to do to put and end to our engine problems. We are in the process of putting a new body on the car already and planning new paint schemes. And we are already heavy into the sponsorship hunt. So far, Racezing Designs, Diver Home Services and Green Clean are coming back and we have at least two new sponsors verbally committed to joining us next year. There are also one or two more that we are working on that are a good possibility.

2003 is looking good already and I can't wait until spring!

Check out pictures of Marty's Hobby Stock being built from the ground up!

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