Tim Kerr ‘Back In The Groove’ After Top-10 At Brewerton; Embracing New Challenges

Story By: CLAYTON JOHNS / KERR MOTORSPORTS – PICTON, ONT – After a busy off-season and a tumultuous start to the 2018 campaign, Tim Kerr finally feels like he’s ‘Back in the Groove’ to success behind the wheel of his Village Variety-sponsored No.07 Bicknell Racing Products Big-Block Modified.

The Picton, Ont. native competes weekly in Central New York at Brewerton Speedway and has found a new Saturday home at Land of Legends Raceway in Canandaigua, NY. Kerr admits it was a tough start to the 2018 campaign after a busy off-season.

“I didn’t really get into race mode until the new car showed up in April, so we’re still playing catch-up,” admits Kerr. “(The new car) is the same as what I had two years ago at Charlotte when we won. We switched it up last year and I didn’t really feel that comfortable in the other car, so we went back to what I was comfortable with.”

The transition to the new car with the team’s old specs has also been challenging for the No.07 team as the notebook gets a weekly update without much help from last year’s notes.

“This car’s hooked up more, so our gearing notes are out of whack,” Kerr said. “It’s a learning curve again. The big thing right now is just making the right calls and getting used to what we need instead of what we were doing. We’re not over adjusting, because you could swing a lot of things with these racecars and you just need to get a good baseline. I think we’re at the point where we’re back to where we should be.”

The start to the season saw Kerr go without a top-10 finish in his first half-dozen races before he broke through last Friday, June 8 at Brewerton with a seventh-place finish in his Enders Racing Engines powered ride.

“It did feel good,” Kerr said. “I think we had a little better car than where we finished. I messed up a little on a restart and made a couple of errors, but the car felt good and like it did in previous years. We still have some tweaking to do on it, but it felt good to get a top-10.”

In addition to finding the right balance on the car, Kerr has been challenged by running two categorically different racetracks on back-to-back nights on a weekly basis. Brewerton’s D-shaped 1/3-mile is not at all similar to the big half-mile at Canandaigua. Kerr’s experience at Brewerton guides him in the right direction, but he doesn’t have the same luxury on Saturday nights.

“The biggest challenge is just knowledge,” Kerr explained. “You have to log laps. The more laps you log, the more you learn. Before this year, I had only been to Canandaigua twice. It’s a learning curve, but it’s a good thing for a racer to have a learning curve. Going from a bullring to a big track forces you to be a little more versatile as a racer.”

Now Kerr is looking forward to Friday’s Showdown at Sundown Super DIRTcar Series race at Brewerton. He knows it’ll be a tough field of racers as the series regulars invade to take on the already talented cast of weekly Big-Block racers. However, he feels well-prepared after last weekend’s tripleheader that also saw him race at Weedsport Speedway.

“We made some good strides last weekend,” Kerr said positively. “Friday night will be a good test because it’s a tour race at Brewerton. The racetrack will be fast early, but it’ll slick off and hopefully we’ll be good enough when it gets slippery because that where it counts.”