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Old news worth re-visiting!!
2008 season in the books.
Happy Holidays to all from Team-SS-Racing... see you in the Spring.
SLORA held it's annual awards banquet last night, which basically caps off the 2008 season. Congratulations to all the award winners including our very own:
Russ Stone (178R) - SLORA, FE-Hydro, Class Champion *
* we know this would be 99R-Andy Furlott's if he'd been able to race all season with us... hope to see him ALL next year.
Here are some backlog notes for Waitts Lake and the AOF Nationals at Moses Lake.
September 6th-7th 2008 - Waitts Lake was a big first for Team SS Racing... we finally put all 3 FE's on the water for the same heats. Once again there were struggles in performance, but George finally found some life in the 92R-Gone Bananas. In a great race to the line with Russ' 178R-Green Machine took his first second place finish to the delights of the crowd. Mike's 97R suffered through performance issues again with suspected fuel delivery issues.
September 20th-21st 2008 - Moses Lake was the site of AOF's National's event and Friday testing was perfect! The 97R boat found some good speed with a fresh prop and was primed for a run at the title. 178R decided to be the Murphy's Law boat of the day and gave us all kinds of fits. Wrenching on 4-5 different issues, it was finally ready to run Nationals, but never really came out the way it should. Chances are some changes are in order this off season. The crew prepped the 97R for Mike with George taking it out for a little test "ride"! It looked to be running within range of the rest and with 7 FE's in attendance, this would be the biggest class field of the year.
Unfortunately the winds blew us off the lake all day Saturday (we think Terry was making his presence felt). We lost a couple boats as travel and schedules only allowed Saturday for availability and this included our own Mike Stone in 97R. Sunday the weather held out enough all day to get our Nationals event in. Conditions were not near as nice as Friday and the Banana boat magically lost some speed but was still able to come home for a 3rd place finish overall for George Doi III. Russ Stone and the Green Machine followed up with a 4th place Nationals finish.
Though it was a tough season overall with the huge loss of our friend Terry Fiorelli , there were some positives to come out for our team to build upon for next year.
Smoke on the Water... tribute to Terry Fiorelli - R26.
PRAYERS TO ALL FROM THE FAMILIES OF TEAMSSRACING
We are sorry to have heard the news that Terry Fiorelli passed away this morning due to the injuries suffered in last weekends race accident. Terry was a great man who did great things for the sport of boat racing here in the inland northwest. We will remember his great smile, kind heart and willingness to help out anybody.
Terry... we love you and miss you, keep turning left and forever be smoke on the water.
Terry Fiorelli - R26 - Smoke on the Water
Banks Lake,WA - Father's Day Weekend 2008
A tough weekend of emotions at Newport/Oldtown... team wise the results were good for the one entry - 178R driven by Russ Stone. However, we are saddened by the accident in the final heat of Pro-1100-Hydro on Saturday. Terry Fiorelli failed to complete the turn coming to the front stretch and ran into the shore. He was taken from Newport to Spokane and later flown to Harbor View Medical Center in Seattle where he is in critical condition with several major injuries. Also, one spectator (former racer Tom Pringle) was hit with injuries to both lower legs, though we hear surgery was successful.
We would like everyone to keep both of these men in their continued prayers so that they may both fully recover. Keep the loved ones, family and friends of those involved and affected in your prayers to help them through this difficult time. And finally to all of us in the racing "family", we say a prayer to keep each and every one of us safe doing what we love, knowing the inherit risks and danger.
Amen
Just got word that next weekends race and AOF Western Divisionals, has been postponed due to water conditions. The water level is too high with no beach or pit access. Currently planning to reschedule 2 weeks later on July 19-20 with testing still on Friday. Latest data and forecasts for Albini Falls Dam show the river just starting to drop, so hopefully we will be good enough to race in 2 weeks.
Well, it was another frustrating weekend at the Banks Lake race. We brought two boats, leaving the Green Machine 178R home for the weekend. This being a little bigger course, we hoped to stretch the legs on Mike's orange boat - 97R a bit. Friday testing was short, as we were blown off due to high winds after just a few laps. Then, after resetting the course Saturday morning, Mike went out to test before racing got under way only to throw a prop blade and break the distributor bracket in the process. Of course the race program was set to start with the SE's out in the first flight, so Team SS went into trash mode to get a motor swap done (thanks for the hands, Blue Sky Racing). We had a little extra time to work due to the ambulance leaving with an injured racer (our good friend Amanda... luckily she was OK, just bruised from the exit). It was a crazy schedule with the delay and multiple restarts in other classes, so we only ran two heats on Saturday and both George's Gone Bananas 92R and Mike's 97R ran poorly.
Hoping to find new life Sunday and with an extra heat to make up, it was looking to be another busy day. Again, changes to both boats didn't seem to help performance and we struggled all day. Overall George fared better in the points department, but no one was happy. George continued to work on the boat during the second flight and found a couple of things that were suspect. After making changes, both boats requested a hot laps at the end of the days racing. George was able to make it out and it appeared that the fixes had worked.
Since both boats were acting in a similar fashion, we've made the same changes to Mike's boat and put the spare engine back together for the next race. Hopefully, we'll get a chance to find out and the plan is to run all three team boats at the same race for the first time.
Next race will be 4th of July Weekend at Newport, WA/Oldtown, ID on the Pend Oreille river... hope to see you there!!
The SE's on Banks Lake, WA @ Sunbanks Resort... George Doi trying to chase down the field to the starting line.
Well, the first race of 2008 for Team SS Hydroplane Racing is in the books. All-in-all it was a good weekend. The weather was better than we thought it might be and it was a good way to shake off the winter slumber and hit the water. The team's goal was to come away from Elk River with 2 boats and motors intact and running (hadn't ever happened in the past). Mission accomplished, though we realize now we need to be slightly more specific... adding a "without breaking anything" clause also should have been added. We managed to shear a prop shaft clean, behind the gears and it along with a prop departed from the Gone Bananas boat with George running well. After looking discouraged for a few minutes, it was decided to throw a spare foot on and we had the boat ready for the next race.
Mike sat out this race weekend to observe and wrench to see if we could continue to work out some issues, since we have very little opportunity to test. Great job everyone... except for a small mistake (let's just say there was a brain/throttle disconnect), Russ finished all but one heat in first place, to win the class for the weekend. George did a great job racing in only his second race weekend, finishing with a third place overall run, including a nice final lap pass to finish second for his highest heat finish to date. Mike had the Gone Bananas boat running sweet on Sunday and overall things ran well after some adjustments Saturday night.
Only 2 weeks until the first race of the season in Elk River, ID. We are trying to decide whether or not to install ice breakers on the boats!! lol
Current plan is to bring 2 boats down for the race. Hopefully some decent weather for testing and racing so we can keep everybody warm and dry. Hope to see some folks there.
Check out the newly revamped SLORA website (www.slora.com) and you can find some photos from last month's display at the Spokane Auto Boat & Speed Show in the gallery. Just about 6 weeks from the first race of the season and the boys are still busy in the shop. Somehow I still think that first race is going to sneak up on us!! ;-)
Come see us at the Spokane Auto Boat & Speed Show, March 28-30. SLORA is scheduled to be there with a display of 12 boats running from J-Stock outboard all the way up to an inboard Grand National Hydroplane. Team SS will be participating with Sabrina's J-Stock and Russ' FE-Modified.
Race schedules have been posted for those races that the team currently plans to attend at this time (subject to change of course).
Work continues on preparing for the upcoming season...hopefully some early prep work will pay off once the season is underway.
If you're interested in helping us out, we are always on the lookout for sponsorship opportunities. Help us bring some exposure to your business while you help us along the way.
Welcome back, to our home domain!! WWW.TEAMSSRACING.COM is back online. You'll have to excuse the dust as we are still doing some construction around here. Hope to have some photo albums updated soon along with some profiles and other other good stuff as to the happenings with the team.
We'll be updating race schedules as we get them along with race site information and driving directions. Thanks, for stopping by and hope to see you at the races!
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