POWNAL, VT – After some brutal cold weather, the Maxon Racing Team was able to finally let the dirt fly Saturday night at Lebanon Valley. Even with a tough start to their evening, the team and driver Rob Maxon were rewarded with a solid seventh place finish.
Fighting handling problems during the evening, the team went to work to try and get their Bicknell chassis machine working better for feature time. For the most part, what they did worked.
“We struggled all night,” he said. “The car was to loose in the heat so we threw the kitchen sink at it for the feature. We figured we could only go forward and we were good at the start, getting up to like 7th.”
Seventh was as high as the #96 would get as more issues began to arise.
“Near halfway, the carburetor started to skip in the middle of the turns,” he said. “It wouldn’t come back strong until we leveled off on the straightaway’s, so we faded to 10th or 11th I believe. Then, we got caught up in the wreck.”
The wreck Rob is referring to happened when the steering box failed in Michael Sabia’s #7 and he turned hard right into the frontstretch wall. Several cars were collected, including Rob.
“I thought I had a hole down low I could go through but the 250 (Alan Houghtaling) came across so we spun to avoid contact,” he said. “It just happened to be right at the pit entry so I fired the car and went down pit road.”
From that point on, Maxon drove the wheels off his Dane’s Auto Parts #96 to get back to the top 10 from the rear of the field.
“We tried everything we could to get back as many spots as possible and held our own to the end,” Maxon sad. “Coming away with a seventh after all we went through wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what we wanted either. We ran our King of Dirt car because our Valley machine isn’t ready yet so we’re happy with how well the car ran.”
The next race for Maxon Racing will be this coming Sunday night at the Glen Ridge Motorsports Park when the King of Dirt Sportsman Series opens their season with the 35-lap Ice Breaker.