News Director 
Column By: KATELYN & CHRIS HILE / RPW – SYRACUSE, NY – This past weekend the Hile Motorsports Lightning Management 5H and 1911 Established® 25H opened their weekly points seasons at both the Brewerton and Fulton Speedways. Race season had officially arrived and although the weather wasn’t ideal for mid-May both tracks were able to complete their scheduled shows.
The first race of the season always adds a little stress for the drivers as they have to draw for their starting positions. This is unlike the rest of the year where drivers are lined up based on a handicapping system which averages the driver’s last 3 finishes. From this average, drivers are lined up for their heat race starting spots and feature starting spots (if they qualify through the heat). If you asked any driver in the pits I’d bet a good majority would rather not line up based solely off a draw. It seems like we always draw bad when it comes to pulling a number that sets the pace for your night. This weekend was no different as Chris drew 35 out of 40 for both nights and Katelyn didn’t do much better. Both the 5H and 25H were slated to start deep in their qualifying heats.
However, Chris and Katelyn took this as an opportunity to try to tweak their usual set-ups. It’s pretty hard to willingly stray away from something that’s working when you have a decent starting position and a good shot of finishing well. But when you are starting deep and you know nearly all the cars will make the show it’s a little easier to stray from the status quo and try something you’ve been thinking about for a while.
In a perfect world, we’d like to say our courage paid off and we greatly improved on our starting positions. However, we knew we were going to learn from either outcome. Unfortunately, we learned that thinking outside the box is not always best, but a learning experience nonetheless.
Friday night the 5H made it up to 8th before finally settling in 11th and Saturday night Chris again cracked the top 10 before fading back to 15th. Katelyn also had some early success as she moved up in the feature before fading towards the end and retiring to the pits early for a mechanical issue.
Although the finishes were not what we were hoping for, we look forward to next weekend. No matter the outcome we always take what we learned in previous weekend’s as building blocks for the next.
Additionally the Hile Motorsports team had other success as Katelyn had her 25H in the grandstands at Brewerton hosting a very successful 1911 Established® Hard Cider tasting. Fans enjoyed four of the 1911 Established® Hard Cider flavors including their sweeter blueberry and raspberry flavors, their new grapefruit flavor and the classic original hard cider that is also available all season long at the Brewerton and Fulton Speedways. At the end fans enjoyed over 200 samples of cider and 135 of you even entered our raffle! Congrats to our two raffle winners (Amy and Randy) who will be picking up there 1911 apparel and Brewerton Speedway tickets/ 1911 Established® gift card respectively.
As always you can stay up to date with all things Hile Motorsports on www.HileMotorsports.com.
