Landon Huffman and Jimmy Mooring Racing had to try something.
The status quo, racing their new R&S Race Car chassis, was no longer sustainable through the first three CARS Late Model Stock Tour races of the season. They failed to qualify for the season opener at Southern National and were completely uncompetitive at Hickory and Jacksonville.
There was a caveat last week, of course, as Huffman led the most laps but only because he charged to the front while everyone else was saving their tires to earn the $500 halfway bonus.
Huffman took the car to the R&S shop to see if Marcus Richmond and company could figure out what plagued the chassis and a chassis dyno date didn’t produce merit either. It wasn’t even competitive when he raced the car at a Hickory Motor Speedway weekly show.
So, for the next CARS Tour race this weekend at Orange Country, Huffman has brought his PRW chassis instead of the R&S chassis.
“Well the performance the last couple weeks is pretty indicative of why we’re here,” Huffman told Short Track Scene at OCS. “Obviously, the R&S car, we have been bringing something to the track that is fundamentally causing us issues with it. Not necessarily the chassis, it could be anything.
“We just haven’t been able to figure it out yet so bringing it back until we can really trial and error it would be like trying to play a pickup basketball game on a broken leg. It really ain’t going to work so we’ve brough my car our here in the meantime.”
It’s not a company wide issue for R&S obviously with Bobby McCarty, Deac McCaskill and Kaden Honeycutt all having speed and contending for wins.
“So, Marcus has his stuff figured out and his cars are fully capable of running up front,” Huffman said. “That specific car we have, you know, there’s just something bound up or something physically causing the problem that we haven’t figured out yet. It could be a brake problem. We just don’t know.”
There is a longer-term plan for the R&S chassis as Huffman is going to take his R&S car to Kendall Sellers’ shop, who takes care of the other Jimmy Mooring car, and they’re going to take both to Ace Speedway to swap back and forth with identical set-ups to see if they can figure out where the discrepancies between the two identical chassis are.
Richmond believes they’ll be in good hands shaking the car down with Sellers. He also conceded that R&S cars are unlike any other platform on the market in how you set them up and make them go fast, plus the tools you need to set them up.
“When we had our hands on it, a lot of things were still not right,” Richmond said. “With their situation and how much we have going on, that car just needs a lot of attention. Unfortunately, Landon and them don’t 100 percent understand exactly how we do things, which is definitely different than everyone else, in how we set up our cars.
“It’s just different than what they have been working with and our numbers have to be right to make the car run. But once they get it, they are going to be just fine, but we have to get those things right. I see issues with the numbers and stuff that I know isn’t where it needs to be. Hopefully, Kendall Sellers and them have done an amazing job with their program and I think they can all work together and get it going in the right direction.”
Pavement a concern for CARS Tour race at Orange County on Saturday
Even with an older PRW chassis, Huffman expects to run up front this weekend.
“We never go to the race track to run bad,” he said. “But after testing yesterday, I feel like we have a shot at a top-10. A top-15 and give us a shot at more.
“I had a top-10 car for the Orange Krush race and this is just the second time we have raced here. A top-10 isn’t out of the cards. It has a lot of similarities to Tri-County so I feel pretty up to speed.”
