(Minneapolis, MN-April 14, 2000) You can tell that the racing season is kicking in to high gear this month. Between the two ParkerStore teams, they are racing at a total of five events over the next three days.

Jimmy Mars and his crew attended a ParkerStore grand opening at the brand new ParkerStore in Sumter, SC on Thursday, April 13. "They had a great turn out for the open house", said crew chief Chris Mars. "This has to be the biggest crowd of the shows we've done."

The store is estimating that over 300 customers attended the lunch hour event. Several key people from Parker also attended the festivities. This included Bill Douglas, regional manager for the Southeast Region, Doug Ainsworth, service center manager at the Greensboro Service Center, Steve Lohr, connector territory manager, and Bill Eaton, vice president of sales and marketing for the Fluid Connectors Group.

"This is absolutely a first rate race team," said Hose & Equipment, Inc. general manager, Mike Larkins. "We've got a big group of people going out to see Jimmy run tomorrow night at Sumter Speedway. Their cars and equipment were awesome. We're really happy with how the whole event turned out."

Mars will be racing at the Sumter Speedway in Sumter, SC on Friday night, April 14 and at the Fayetteville Speedway in Fayetteville, NC on Saturday night, April 15.

"We're going to try to make it up to Fayetteville for an open practice night right after the open house," said Jimmy. "It's about a two hour drive to North Carolina, and then we will be coming right back to Sumter to race."

Donny Schatz has an even bigger weekend in store. He will have three events in three states in as many days.

On Friday night, the team will be at West Plain Motor Speedway in West Plains, MO. After a one-night show, the team will head to Tri-City Speedway in Granite City, IL, before wrapping up the weekend at Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, IL on Sunday night.

The team has been working extremely hard to get the motors up to their expectations. "The motors just seem to lose horsepower after we get a few laps on them," said Donny. "We have taken them over to a chassis dyno facility in Texas, and we have been able to duplicate the power loss. We've got different heads on the car this year and everything is real touchy. You have really got to stay on top of these motors if you're going to run up front."

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