LAKE FOREST, CA – While it wasn’t a perfect weekend of racing for Carl Renezeder and his crew, they still drove out of Miller Motorsport Park with some new hardware for the trophy case and the points lead in both the Pro-2 and Pro-4 divisions of the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series. Round eight on Sunday afternoon marked the start of the second half of the 15-race schedule, so the team can draw a line in the dirt and get a fresh start on the year.
“We’ve basically held our ground up to this point in the season,” explains Renezeder, whose race shop is in the Southern California city of Lake Forest. “We’ve been working really hard on our homework, and it’s great to see it pay off. We had some great moments in Utah, but we still have plenty of room to improve on these trucks.”
The great moments included his 96th career win on Sunday afternoon and a second-place finish on Saturday in his Lucas Oil/General Tire Pro-4, as well as moving from second to first in the points. He currently leads the Pro-4 division by 18 points and has finished on the podium in all but one, when he finished fourth, of the first eight races.
In the Pro-2 division, he was able to salvage a fourth-place finish in Saturday’s race after losing his rear brakes early on in the contest. Sunday, however, was a huge disappointment. Renezeder’s truck was hit in the rear by another competitor while in the air, which sent him into the track barrier, breaking several parts on the front left corner of the truck. The damage forced him to retire from the race and resulted in an eleventh-place finish. It was also a huge hit in the points, narrowing his lead to only three.
Renezeder knows better than anyone that even just one race would mean there’s a lot of racing left in the season. Anything can happen in the second half of this season with seven points races left to compete. The points lead right now simply means that the work they’ve put in has paid off to this point, earning them some victories and keeping them in contention for the championships. The team is already back to work to see how they can make the trucks even faster and more reliable for their return to Glen Helen the weekend of August 5-7. Hot August nights, indeed. Stay tuned!