iDevRacing Blog

What’s Green and White, and causes a blur at the oval?

Sure… there’s the green and white flag but there’s also Rip Michel’s green, white, and black iDevAffiliate sponsored winning car

Congrats to Rip Michels and the iDevAffiliate racing team for his awesome win in the Jan 29, 2010 NASCAR Super Late Model race portion of the NASCAR Toyota All-Star Showdown at Irwindale, CA.

SEE THE VIDEO WITH RIP’s AFTER RACE INTERVIEW BELOW.

The race was cut short, from 100 laps to 66 and was red-flagged three times because of accidents.

Michels held the lead for the final three laps of the race, and the showdown ended under a green-white-checker flag.

David Gilliland, a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver, was 2nd. He was followed by Andy Allen in 3rd, Derek Thorn in 4th and Jay Sauls in 5th place.

The race was red-flagged for the third time on lap 60. Travis Thirkettle and Alex Haase crashed in Turn 3. Both drivers were running in the top five when the crash happened. Haase is a developmental driver for Kyle Busch Racing.

The race ended with Jacob Gomes spun out in Turn 4. The cars weaved through the final turn trying to avoid Gomes’ car that was stalled in the middle of the track.

Matt Crafton, a driver in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, finished 11th.

Check out the after race interview, courtesy of RPMTV:

With a 2nd place finish for the 2009 Super-late Model Season, Rip Michels is looking forward to a Showdown this Friday January 29, 2010

Rip Michels, a 43 year old ironworker from Mission Hills, Calif, will compete for a breakthrough victory in the 100-lap NASCAR Whelen All-American Series Super Late Model feature at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale (Calif.) on Friday, January 29.

That race, along with the following day’s 75-lap NASCAR Whelen All-American Series Late Model and the headline NASCAR Camping World Series Toyota All-Star Showdown will be telecast live on SPEED. SIRIUS NASCAR Radio will also air live from the track both days.

“We’re focused on our Super Late Model effort,” said Michels, the division’s champion at the Irwindale track in 2002, 2003 and 2007. “We didn’t decide to do it until a few weeks ago. Some friends and sponsors got together and encouraged us, and I couldn’t be happier. The race being live on SPEED was a big factor.

“Our sponsor Jimmy Webster of iDevAffiliate.com became a friend and crew member,” Michels said.

Thanks to some top notch driving by Rip, and a great team of support crew and sponsors, we won the race last weekend.

Here’s an update direct from Rip Michels himself:

We finally got the win for the iDevAffiliate sponsorship. It took 3 races and a lot of testing Thursday and Friday night but it was worth it.

We tried a new experimental set-up on the car for testing and kept tuning on it until qualifying. In qualifying we set Fast time for the 12th time this year with a 18.06 which is about 99.80 mph average around the 1/2 mile track.

The new set-up was OK but not our best and we had a 2nd place car most of the race. A late caution with 2 laps to go opened the door for a win.

Side by side racing for the win with 2 laps to go is always exciting and to get iDev their first win made it even better. I now have a new lucky cut off shirt…

Rip Michels

Here’s a picture of our car in the race – running hot:

iDevAffiliate Race Car #12 with Rip Michels driving for the win