Harder had only raced a pair of events heading into the last event at the 5/8^th-mile track, but in his first visit to Cayuga he had been very fast, finishing fifth overall.

The black # 58 machine struggled in practice, and the problems continued into qualifying.  “We were fighting to find the handle on the car, but as we got further along in practice the car got a little better so we didn’t make any changes before qualifying.” 

The time trial run would put Harder near the back of the field for the first 50-lap feature.  When the green dropped, Abe tried to move towards the front, but he was still struggling to find the handle on his Pontiac, and a ninth-place finish was all he could muster. 

“We made a bunch of changes before the second 50 lapper,” explained Harden.  “We changed the tire pressures, adjusted the crossweight in the car, and swapped some tires around to take a little stagger out of it.”

Harder rolled from seventh in the second feature and batted throughout the early going, but it was evident he was fighting his Pontiac.  “We were tight in the middle and loose off the corners.”  With the laps winding down, and Abe at the back of the pack he brought his car to the attention of his crew on pit road as they went to work, making adjustments for the final run to the checkers, but the crew found that the right front tire was losing pressure.  They didn’t have enough time to fix it before the field went green, and Harder finished the final few laps keeping the car out of the wall with a tire going down.  “There wasn’t much we could do, but salvage a finish.  It was a little disappointing because we had run so much better in the second 50, until right near the end.  The tire going down was really throwing the car off.”

Abe would wind up ninth in the second feature of the night. 

Harder was pleased with the way the season ended up, especially considering the team only ran three events.  “We really ran well in the first race at Cayuga, and learned a ton at Sunset in our first trip there.  We didn’t have much experience on a track that small, and our team was having the same trouble that other teams were.”

The Harder Racing Team is presently exploring options for next season, “There has been talk of eight races for next season, and I think that it’s a very good series.  I like traveling different tracks, and racing in different places, but we’ll just have to wait and see how the winter goes, but I would love to be able to make a commitment to the series.”