Way to go Don and Casey.

I think the last time I seen that car race was August 17, 2006....

That pic is my Stealth/Sesco Mopar that has won so many times. We'll get that out again this Summer.

The Spike that won at DuQuoin is one of the first Spike configuration cars that Godfrey built. Maybe it's the first, IDK. It's actually a combo car, the only Spike that he has built to do that, so I'm told. This car has a storied history actually. It ran with Tracy Hines at Irwindale as a Focus car I believe and then they put an Esslinger in it for the Chili Bowl with Tony Elliott behind the wheel. It was a white/blue 27 (Venture Racing) and some of the Spike promos use a pic of my car still today in that configuration. The car then went to the Mocklers and became a Focus car again. LOL Stephanie won a lot of races with it and Warren Mockler told me that the car really loves the dirt. The car was then sold to a party on the East Coast near Washington D.C. They ran it a few times as a Focus also and then put it up for sale. I went down and bought out the entire operation and sold off all the Focus stuff. Most of it went to Glenn Ollendorf in Chicago and a spare engine went to the Bertrands up in Mass.

I took the entire car apart and started from scratch, so almost everything on it is nearly new. I bought a Brayton/Gaerte Ford from a guy in California for around $8000. That engine was in the car driven by Ryan Newman at Pikes Peak that set the world record which was recently broken at Iowa Speedway. That engine was then purchased by the Baues of Leaders Edge in Indianapolis. They ran it for some time and then sold to the guy in California. He ran it a while and then sold it to me.

My mechanic, Bill Klein, did some minor freshening and we put it in the Spike. That was in 2007 I believe. We ran it at Belleville, IL with Donnie Beechler and then Brad Kuhn took over at Paducah, KY. Brad went out in the heat race and put a 1/2 lap on everybody right away and then the engine started going south. To make a long story short, everything in the engine was trashed at that point and I made the decision to rebuild it from the ground up. My mechanic/engine builder, a Ford expert, did a lot of research about the flaws of the Ford racing engines and incorporated the solutions in the rebuild. (NOTE: One of his engines just won at a sports car race (Lerner Family, owners of the Cleveland Browns) at California Speedway) The Spike car has only been out a few times since then, driven a couple of times at Kokomo by Geoff Kaiser. Geoff has very little experience on dirt so we really did not have a good read on the performance of the car. Last Spring I took the car over to Gaerte's and put it on the chassis dyno. It produced some really good numbers and the computer read showed that it was an extemely smooth engine from the bottom to the top which is what you would want at a small tight track.

Mike Cray has been hounding me for some time to get the Spike out and see what it will do. That's how it happened to show up at DuQuoin, and I was a bit edgey about bringing it there because that place is really tough to get a win. We'll run it outdoors and see what it will do.

Congratulations to the Don Moore team and Casey. Impressive.

Tony Barhorst
www.rumbleseries.com

Nice job guys. Good to see both of you in victory lane again.

Man with that kind of history in that car even I should have been able to win, lol.

Casey is a class act and deserves to win more often. This young man has helped us more than you all will ever know and for that we thank him.
Congadulations Don and Casey on a great run.

Jerry,Sarah,Paul,Josh and Sonny Spencer #66j
stida.com

Well said indeed!

Your very Welcome Casey! I also had a very good time at the races as well as working w/ you. I could not have did it all w/ out your skills and knowledge. You are a real class act. I hope to be able to work w/ you more in the future.

Mike Cray

Don you forgot to thank the tire company...

That car does have a lot of history, glad to see you start off you racing season with a victory.

Don as i said that car is a super dirt car , stephanie loved that car on the dirt, reallt glad to see you get along with it also!!!!