This past weekend, the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour made their third of five stops at Connecticut’s Thompson International Speedway for the running of the annual Sunoco 300.

The No. 90 team had a great start to the weekend, as Renee qualified 11th out of the almost 40-car field. While far from her best qualifying effort (she’s previously qualified on the front row), this is the team’s best time trial run of the 2005 season.

Starting just behind Series’ point lead Ted Christopher, Renee ran with the lead pack for the first several dozen laps. Eventually she went down a lap, but by passing cars and working on the car during pit stops Renee and the team fought extremely hard to get her lap back.

With just 46 laps left in the 300-lap event, Renee was running strong on the lead lap. Unfortunately, at that point, the engine broke a valve spring and bent a pushrod – abruptly ending the team’s convincing run.

Said Renee, “Engine reliability hasn’t been an issue so far this season, so this kind of took me by surprise. We picked up a skip going down the front stretch, switched ignition boxes in turn one and stepped on the gas coming off two – but it was obvious we were down a cylinder. It’s a tough deal because that’s clearly the strongest we’ve ever run at the 300. We’ll hurriedly pick-up the pieces and head to Loudon.”

As Renee mentioned, the NASCAR WMT is facing a short turn-around as they are expected in the garage area of New Hampshire International Speedway by 6 AM on Thursday morning (Sep. 15). We hope to have better news following the 100-lap race, which is scheduled to be run as a support event to this weekend’s NASCAR Nextel Cup race.