Home » Jeep News » Quadratec Team 609 Driver Summary of Jellico, TN
Quadratec Team 609 Driver Summary of Jellico, TN
Tuesday July 3rd, 2007
Aaron Stapen
Driver
Stock Class #609
Quadratec Rock Crawling Team
It’s about 7 PM on June 7, we are packed up and heading out to Jellico, TN. This will be the third race of the season for team. Although we have a twelve hour ride ahead of us we are excited because Jellico has always been one of the best competition sites on the East coast. Arrival time comes around 7 AM and we head to breakfast after correcting a slight reservation error at the hotel. Then we are off to the event site. At first glance it looked as if the courses were the same as last year, but when we got closer we noticed that they had brought in the heavy equipment to change the terrain. Now the adrenaline was pumping because I couldn’t wait to run the courses and improve on the seventh place finish in the last event. As the evening went on and keeping with this year’s pattern it rained during the show and shine and unfortunately the parade through town was canceled. I was really hoping the courses would have time to dry out before we started… and luckily they did!
Saturday morning started out great, the weather was perfect and I had my long time spotter Don Nichols back for this event. We crawled through the first course without much trouble, but we did hit a cone. A costly mistake probably caused by the first course jitters. We were able to run the second course near perfect, receiving only one point for a back out. The third course proved to be very difficult for use. Some how we got locked up in the rocks and a liberal use of stacking rocks and gas peddle freed me, but not before I hit two cones. We moved one to the fourth course and completed it without incident. After the first day it only took the one bad course to put us in the middle of the field, seventh place. The good news was that I was only eight points out of fourth.
Hoping for some improvement on Sunday we changed our strategy to a more passive style. We were hoping that by taking it easy and running the courses with more finesse that we could move up in rank. We were starting first and although we hit a cone we were real happy with a low score on this difficult course. The second, third, and fourth course went near perfect with no cones taken. We chose not to take the bonus lines and at the end of the day our cautious style paid off because we moved into fourth place. Off to the shoot out we went. All I had to do was run a smooth course and I could lock up fourth, but unfortunately I got high centered. After pulling out the spotter line to free the Jeep, I raced for the finish line with little time running out and hit a cone. This gave me too many points and pushed me back to fifth place. Disappointed that I could not hold on to fourth place we loaded up to head back to Delaware. On the twelve hour ride home I had some time to reflect and I was real proud of the team’s performance and the fact that we did improve on the previous races standings. Now I can not wait until the next race at Rausch Creek in PA on July 14-15, so I can try to get back on the podium.
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Throughout this web site all the preceding marks & logos are used for identification purposes only. Quadratec has no affiliation with the Chrysler LLC, MOPAR®, General Motors Company, Ford Motor Company, Suzuki Motor Corporation or Isuzu Motors Limited. It is not implied that any part listed is a product of, or approved by Chrysler LLC, General Motors Company, Ford Motor Company, Suzuki Motor Corporation or Isuzu Motors Limited.
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