ALL OUR DRIVERS
MOLEA FAMILY
AA/SUPERCHARGED FAMILY
August 31st 2009
Well I am sure everyone has heard the news we took the 2009 AA/Supercharged championship this last weekend. It was not our finest race of the season but it still ended in our favor after all the hard work throughout the season.
Every team ran hard and gave our fans a great race weekend. We had a great track at champion raceway and there was
some great et's laid down by numerous teams. We didnt put down the numbers we would have liked but still had a great time with our family and friends. We were in the point lead coming into this final race by 280 points and knew that the Reinero team was wanting to take the lead and win the championship this year. We went into the first round of eliminations against Joel Matton.What a great race team! Mike slept on the light and Joel was gone out of the gate ,
Mike ran to the end and ended up taking the win light by only a small margin. Second round paired us up against Reinero. We didnt have lane choice so ended up in the left lane and had the car tuned for a great run but knew that to beat Gary we
had to run a number because he was running 6.80's all weekend. We lost a piston (or 2) after the launch and it ened that run pretty fast .Gary took the win. For the last pair of the day it was Howard Anderson paired with Gary Reinero. Here is how it worked...we were in the point lead so that put gary 1 round behind us,when we went a round he had 2 rounds to win.So to win the championship he had to win the whole race .Our fate laid in the hands of the Anderson team if they won the race we won the championship and if Gary won he took the championship. I think I held my breath the entire race,Howard did a great job of keeping the car in line because it was drifting out of the grove pretty fast. He ended up driving around Gary across the line... I lost my voice, shed a few tears and have a few brusied ribs from all the hugs but I tell you it was so worth it after all the hard work and trial and errors along the way (a lost engine or 2 from a bad call on a tune-up)but with a great group of people we race with to all the fine tracks we race on it was all worth it.
AUGUST 14TH...
Well we made it home from Canada with a VERY BIG WIN!!! The Hospitality,track,weather everything was just great. A bit on the hot side being about 95
in the shade .yes 95..our group of AA/Supercharged cars put down some fantastic numbers all weekend and there was some historical runs as well.
I think that every run that we made was in the high 6 second range. We ended up in 5th place in the qualifing ladder at the end of saturday. There were lots of 6 second passes with minumum breakage if any!
Sunday morning we had first round with Gary Reniero (#1 qualifier) so we knew that we had to get him out of the gate if we were to continue with the points race. We got the car down the track straigth and fast beating Gary. Next round we had Mitch Chamberlain and again he is a tough component (#2 qualifier) we had a reaction time of 0.013 and Mitch had a 0.018 at the end of the track I had a 6.974 with Mitch's 6.970 we got the win light with a 0.001 win...Thankgoodness for computers. Last round we had Brent Harris (#3 qualifier) he was having his best weekend ever with his new Fontana motor. Brent was ready to go too fast and turned on the red light giving us the Victory in Mission Canada!
Ok now for Woodburn..
We were ready for a fast track after Mission and the first pass the tires did nothing but SPIN! so with only 1 other pass we knew that we had to get a number on the board to qualify.. we ended up in the #7 position at the end of saturday.Not were we would like but it would have to do.
Sunday morning we had the #3 quailfier and guess what it was Gary Reniero AGAIN! Now we are in a points race for the year end championship so again we had to take the win in the first round to contiune on or we would be out of the points race and be in 2nd place with Gary undefeatable.
Up to the line and ready to stage but nothing both cars sat with Gary and Mike not wanting to be the first to turn on the staging lights so that turns in to a staging duel..I dont remember who turned on the light first but it was exciting and I think I was holding my breath the whole time. Mike got off the line with minimal tire spin but gary hit hard and spun immediatly.I knew the win was to be ours..Mike ran a 6.877 with tire shake right before the 1/8 mile.
2nd round we had Howard Anderson who ran a 6.874 the run before so he had the lane choice. Again the win was to be ours as Howard overpowered the track instantly and the win was ours.
In the finals we had the Rookie Joel Matton who had the bad luck of having a loose oil filter and was dripping oil and was told to shut it off. We were looking forward to a good race and it wasnt to be so Mike made a single run and for the second race in a row took the win.It landed us in the #1 points position and we look forward to working hard to keep the lead and take the championship in Medford.
So ok you've all asked for the updates and to keep our website current so here is the page for that!
For the last month or so Mike has been building a motor for the car. As most of you all know the last
race in Bakersfield we lost our motor due to a rocker arm ball coming off and going thru the motor.With the economy as it has been, it
has been a bit harder to get the parts that we would like to have. But with that being said I think that all
the time and hard work that Mike has put in the motor that we are going to be off to a great 2009 race season!
Last weekend (April 25th ) in Medford at Champion Raceway Mike made a few shake down passes.
The weather was good,cool but not cold and the weather had been nice for the last few weeks so that made for a
pretty good track.
The first pass was a 7.49 @ 181 mph. The car was tuned to be fat to be on the safe side. The car went straight but seemed to
break loose in third gear. Everything looked fine on the car and we got it fueled up and ready to make another pass.
The second pass looked good also. This time going into 3rd gear the car broke loose again and Mike had to pull it back a bit. Still that pass
resulted in a 7.39 @ 185mph . Not too bad as the car was not being tuned like a regular race. We decided to pack it up and bring it home to check
out the whole car. It has been sitting for the winter and we wanted to make sure everything looked good before it hit the track for the first race
in Woodburn,our season opener.
I will keep this page updated after the races happen or if something new and exciting is happening and I dont want to wait till after the races!
Hope to see you at the races. Shelley
Woodburn season opener May 16,17
Woodburns season opener had high expectations for all the teams but being the first race of the year we all had new . that we needed to try out.It worked for some teams and not for others. We had a great qualifing number on our second pass on Sat.
which put us in the #2 position. We ran a 7.22 on the first pass,had a really rich motor so it was a bit lazy on the top end. After a tune- up we got our 6 second pass. We pulled the pan and checked all the bearings. Everything looked good,it went back together until
race day on Sunday. Sunday morning we went to warm the motor up at 10:30 am and the #7 cylinder was dumping oil and just
smoked up the pits. We had an hour and a decison to make-sit it out or change a piston. We decided to make a mad dash and
changed #7 piston. We needed a afternoon but had only a hour to make the call. We MADE IT!!! We changed positions to be the
last pair out and it worked out for us. Unfortunatly we lost in the first round to Howard Anderson. We ran a 7.30 but after reading the
computer graphs we made that pass on #7 cylinders.For some reason we were not firing on #1 .It ran cold all the way down the
track. Qualifying results below. More to come.
1. Gary Reinero 6.817 203.85
2. Mike Molea 6.973 194.17
3. Mitch Chamberlin 7.079 194.76
4. Troy Owen 7.086 192.80
5. Scott White 7.147 196.99
6. Howard Anderson 7.217 200.17
7. Bill Fitting 8.801 123.46
8. Monte Grubb 11.219 74.32
9. Scott Wyke N/A
Sunday before eliminations tear down.
Woodburn Oldies but Goodies June 20th-21st 2009
MAD MIKE RUNNER UP AT THE OLDIES BUT GOODIES
Here is the new update. We set up camp Friday night and got everything ready for a
busy weekend. On Saturday we had a wedding in Grants Pass at 4:30pm, Mikes oldest
son was getting married. So we had to qualify Saturday morning 9:30 because we had to
leave around 11am to get home in time. We had done alot of work that week to the car and
didnt have time to fine tune everything.That showed when we made a pass at 11.50
popping down the whole track! We had a great time at the wedding (it was beautiful) we
made it back to Woodburn at 10pm Saturday night. We found out that we were bumped
to #9 spot . We ended up getting one more chance to qualify Sunday morning before
Elimainations-10am. All we wanted was a 8.50 or better to get in the field. We ended
up with a 7.10 and that landed us in the # 3 spot. So that gave us the new member Joel
in his 37 chevy as first round match. We ran a 6.92 to secure the next round win. We had
Howard Anderson in the 2nd round match up and ran a 6.91 and broke the blower belt
right after the 8th mile mark- we had a great 60 foot-1.07 and we were on a high 6.70 pass.
Howard had tires shake and ran a 7.40 pass so even breaking the belt we took the win.
We keep giving the car more fuel and it is showing in the performance. On that pass we
broke the mag box (broke out the wires) so we had lots of help to get the car in the
final round against Gary Reneiro. We made the call and lined up against Gary. We had
a 1.05 60 foot-which is fantastic! But the win was not to be. The car left good but
immediately the car went to the center line, we call it "marbles" and Mike tried to pull
it back but it instead went on 2 wheels and all out of control.Which resulted in an aborted
run. I want to thank all our fans for the continued support. It was a hard but fun weekend
for us. With the running back and forth for the wedding and trying to put on a great race
it made of an exhausting but fun weekend!! Hope to see you at the races! Shelley
Woodburn #2 Final Results
Round 1
Howard Anderson defeated Troy Owen 6.884 200.71 to 7.712 182.40
Mike Molea defeated Joel Matton 6.922 193.09 to 7.475 161.31
Gary Reinero defeated Scott White 7.163 201.88 to 7.288 193.05
Bill Fitting defeated Mitch Chamberlin 7.328 172.91 to 8.203 122.11
Semi Finals
Mike Molea defeated Howard Anderson 6.919 170.74 to 7.429 197.45
Gary Reinero defeated Bill Fitting 6.747 204.40 to 7.440 180.14
Finals
Gary Reinero defeated Mike Molea 6.80 203 to Aborted Run
