7/4/2009
Derek Snyder
Bitter sweet weekend ends with good run at Owosso
Derek Snyder and the Vertech Motorsports team traveled to Dixie speedway friday night with hopes of turning some of their bad luck around. Snyder came out of the box strong when he was 2nd quick in hot laps. The team made small changes before qualifying and Snyder went out ready to set another quick time, Snyder went into turn one and slid up the track into the wall, nobody was sure what happened but something may have broke. The team was about ready to load it up when members from several other teams jumped in and got the car fixed for the heat race. Snyder had to start in the back of the heat race but quickly worked his way up to third and was working over 2nd place on the last lap. Robert Snyder made a couple of changes for the feature and the car was on a rail as Snyder picked off cars one by one, coming from last to 9th place in just 10 laps. Snyder had closed up a straightaway gap to the leaders when the U-joint failed, taking him out of contention.
The next morning the team took the car down to Troy Underwoods shop and thrashed to get it back together for the Owosso race. After all of the work the team had done, Snyder was able to qualify in 11th position. Snyder started on the second row of the heat race and was running hard, avoiding a spin right in front of him. He was able to get to 2nd and stay there with an ill handling race car. For the feature the Vertech Motorsports team changed almost everything on the car in hopes to make it better, and better it was. Snyder charged from 11th to a 6th place finish in the feature, avoiding wrecks the entire way. This weekend was an exciting roller coaster ride for the team but the perseverance paid off.