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Cole Mann May 3-4 - Round 1 Rotax North East Series - Oakland Valley Race Park, Cuddebackville, NY Written By: Walters Web Design (5/5/08 - St. Louis, MO) -- This past weekend was Round 1 of the Rotax North East Series held at Oakland Valley Race Park in Cuddebackville, NY. This is a series that is held all over the United States in different regions and the top Drivers from each region will qualify for a spot in the Grand Nationals that are being held at USAIR in Shawano, WI, September 2008. From there all of the best drivers in the US will be competing for a spot to go to the World Finals to be held in Italy in October 2008. This would be Cole's first time competing in the Senior Rotax 125 class. He just moved up from Juniors this season. As Cole has been mainly focusing on TaG so far this year he was now going to jump into the Rotax. Rain came in for practice day on Saturday, but dried up by mid afternoon. Practice day was not going to great, as the team was having some motor issues. Cole could not get any straight away speed. The entire day was spent testing and changing every possible part to try to find out what the problem was. It was a some what of a discouraging day for Cole and Keith. The Maranello Kart was working great and no adjustments needed to be made to the Kart, but the motor issues were definitely a problem. Sunday was race day and a fellow racer from the Rotax Masters division, Tim Hannen, came over and offered Cole one of his spare motors to use. He was also helping them on Saturday to try to figure out what was wrong with Cole's motor. The team took him up on the offer and scrambled to get everything changed to be able to go out in practice. Practice seemed to go much better and just a few gearing changes had to be made. Once qualifying came we had no idea what the outcome would be. All the seniors seemed to be looking pretty fast in the practice. We never did any timing of others because we were so focused on getting Cole's problems straightened out. They did a 3 lap qualifying session and Cole managed to pull off the pole position, by 6 tenths over 2nd place! Everyone was extremely surprised and thrilled. For the pre-final Cole got the jump and never looked back. He went wire to wire and each lap increasing his lead over second position. He won by a very comfortable margin. The final was pretty much a carbon copy of the pre-final race only Cole's win was several seconds over second place. On the start Cole again got the jump and good thing because the entire pack behind him were all fighting coming into the first turn and a they all bunched up and slowed up giving Cole the opportunity to completely run away with the race. A quite impressive showing for this former Junior! Next race for this series will be June 7 & 8th back at Oakland Valley Race Park, June 28 & 29th at F1 Boston, again at F1 on July 19 & 20th and the series will wrap up back at Oakland Valley Race Park on August 10 & 11th. Cole would like to give a special THANKS! to Tim Hannen for coming to the rescue with a spare motor. Cole would like to thank his partners for their continued support of his racing career. Thanks to San Yves Motorsports, Shupps Kart Shop, Savage Designs, World Wide Bearings and Walters Web Design. To learn more about Cole Mann Racing and the very successful future on the way, please visit our resume page and/or contact page. We would be happy to go in to detail with you about how motorsports marketing can help your company or business grow! |
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